subject:"mainframe selling points"

Interesting note from a list reader...

BTW David, IBM Main list membership is free. The only membership requirement
is to be interested in the list.

Don

-Original Message-
From: david kramf [mailto:dakr@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:56 AM
To: donb...@gmail.com
Subject: mainframe selling points

Hi Don,

My name is David Kramf .I picked your name as one of the participants to
this conversation that on the  IBM mailing list digest. Hope I am not
intruding. 

I am a very experienced MF developer . I quit my job several months ago to
do more interesting stuff and trying to develop on my own. This is
impossible to do on the MF 
platform because the MF is not accessible . You need to invest about  5K to
10K just to to have it  (legally ) on your personal pc based, and there is
no freely, updated and convenient 
system where you can buy your virtual server at a reasonable price. ( I pay
20 dollars a month for a linux VS. This is a reasonable price ). So I
migrated myself to other platforms
(OS X , LINUX , RUBY ) where you can easily get access to development
platforms and can later distribute your product.
If IBM won't make an effort to open the MF platform for the huge multitude
of developers working and  developing around the world on LINUX ,
smartphones , and tablets , then the MF is
doomed.

Thank You very much for reading , and I will be much obliged if you send
this message to the mailing list ( I am not a member myself ).
David Kramf
Tel-Aviv , ISRAEL =

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Steve Comstock


On 1/31/2013 7:32 AM, Don Williams wrote:

Interesting note from a list reader...

BTW David, IBM Main list membership is free. The only membership requirement
is to be interested in the list.

Don

-Original Message-
From: david kramf [mailto:dakr@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:56 AM
To: donb...@gmail.com
Subject: mainframe selling points

Hi Don,

My name is David Kramf .I picked your name as one of the participants to
this conversation that on the  IBM mailing list digest. Hope I am not
intruding.

I am a very experienced MF developer . I quit my job several months ago to
do more interesting stuff and trying to develop on my own. This is
impossible to do on the MF
platform because the MF is not accessible . You need to invest about  5K to
10K just to to have it  (legally ) on your personal pc based, and there is
no freely, updated and convenient
system where you can buy your virtual server at a reasonable price. ( I pay
20 dollars a month for a linux VS. This is a reasonable price ). So I
migrated myself to other platforms
(OS X , LINUX , RUBY ) where you can easily get access to development
platforms and can later distribute your product.
If IBM won't make an effort to open the MF platform for the huge multitude
of developers working and  developing around the world on LINUX ,
smartphones , and tablets , then the MF is
doomed.


Well, the mainframe is doomed for those who think small.

The mainframe is not the platform for small.




Thank You very much for reading , and I will be much obliged if you send
this message to the mailing list ( I am not a member myself ).
David Kramf
Tel-Aviv , ISRAEL =

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Dana Mitchell

On Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:49:25 -0600, Ron Wells ron.we...@slfs.com wrote:

..
In the furture I see one hardware platform .. sort of see that
direction...the up to you..to pick size and OS for your needs...
..

I think it is really close to that now.  Power machines can run IBM i, AIX, and 
Linux under PowerVM. All across the hardware range from a blade to the biggest. 
  Look at the Power 795,  look familiar?

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/pod03053usen/POD03053USEN.PDF

I suspect the barriers keeping z/OS from  being supported under PowerVM are 
more political than technical based.

Dana

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler

imugz...@gmail.com (Itschak Mugzach) writes:
 So why don't you save the money and run your corporate network from the
 mainframe ;-)

discussion in linkedin Enterprise Systems that 4% of IBM
revenue is mainframe hardware sales, but mainframe business is 25% of
total revenue ... for every dollar of hardware, customers are paying
$5.25 for software, services, and storage.  
http://lnkd.in/mjYX6H

A maxed out z196 with 80 processors  rating of 50BIPS goes for $28M or
$560,000/BIPS ... however, on avg. customers are paying total of $175M
(i.e. 6.25 times the base hardware cost, aka difference between 4% of
revenue for just hardware, but total of 25% revenue) ... or $3.5M/BIPS

as I've mentioned several times, by comparison IBM has base list price
of $1815 for e5-2600 blade rated at 527BIPS or $3.44/BIPS (a factor
of million times difference).

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Joel C. Ewing

As point of comparison, merge this with prior info from Timothy 
(comments after):

On 01/31/2013 08:32 AM, Don Williams wrote:

Interesting note from a list reader...

BTW David, IBM Main list membership is free. The only membership requirement
is to be interested in the list.

Don

-Original Message-
From: david kramf [mailto:dakr@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:56 AM
To: donb...@gmail.com
Subject: mainframe selling points

Hi Don,

My name is David Kramf .I picked your name as one of the participants to
this conversation that on the  IBM mailing list digest. Hope I am not
intruding.

I am a very experienced MF developer . I quit my job several months ago to
do more interesting stuff and trying to develop on my own. This is
impossible to do on the MF
platform because the MF is not accessible . You need to invest about  5K to
10K just to to have it  (legally ) on your personal pc based, and there is
no freely, updated and convenient
system where you can buy your virtual server at a reasonable price. ( I pay
20 dollars a month for a linux VS. This is a reasonable price ). So I
migrated myself to other platforms
(OS X , LINUX , RUBY ) where you can easily get access to development
platforms and can later distribute your product.
If IBM won't make an effort to open the MF platform for the huge multitude
of developers working and  developing around the world on LINUX ,
smartphones , and tablets , then the MF is
doomed.

Thank You very much for reading , and I will be much obliged if you send
this message to the mailing list ( I am not a member myself ).
David Kramf
Tel-Aviv , ISRAEL =


On 01/30/2013 11:56 PM, Timothy Sipples wrote:

A couple points (and not new ones, but I guess they need repeating):

1. You don't need a zPDT, RUTz, or zEnterprise machine to develop and test
for z/OS and its middleware. In fact, in many cases you don't need to pay
even one dollar. IBM's PartnerWorld Validation Program for z/OS is one
notable example:

https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/stg_com_agr_zos

That's a real zEnterprise machine located in Dallas, as it happens. Free is
a rather good price!

Here's some more information:

https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/isv_com_tsp_iic_resources_systemz_remote_offerings

...

Timothy Sipples
Both of the alternatives Timothy mentions require a company with IBM 
PartnerWorld membership.  I may be misinterpreting the PartnerWorld 
requirements, but my impression was that you had to be an software 
vendor/developer to apply, not just be exploring whether you could 
develop the capability for z/OS application development to become a z/OS 
vendor/developer.Assuming that it would be possible for a small, 
not-yet-established startup company to apply, the free Validation 
Program is for a limited time (60 days), and although re-application 
sounds possible, it also reads like acceptance is not guaranteed, and 
that this is intended for development.  The Remote Offerings option is 
not free but based on CP and storage resource usage, with a minimal 
usage level and minimum monthly charge of $550/month, which obviously 
doesn't compare very favorably with the $20/month quoted cost of a Linux 
VM development platform.


I think the point made by David Kramf is well taken:  that if you have a 
sound concept for an application and are exploring starting out on your 
own into application development, the more-than-an-order-of-magnitude 
increase in up-front investment required to develop for the z/OS 
platform versus Linux is a serious impediment to choosing z/OS as a 
platform, even if you already have a z/OS skill set.  One can perhaps 
make a valid argument that this guarantees that companies marketing z/OS 
software must have a certain minimal size and capability for product 
support that is appropriate to a platform where RAS is of such great 
importance, but it also guarantees that most potential developers and 
start-up software companies will choose alternative platforms.


--
Joel C. Ewing,Bentonville, AR   jcew...@acm.org 

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Re: mainframe selling points

Joel,

One problem, since when does IBM give something away for freebeen
here done that, got many many t-shirts. Plus it's on their systems whose code
is it you developed ? Yours or theirs ?

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll
understand. - Chinese Proverb

On Jan 31, 2013, at 11:06 AM, Joel C. Ewing jcew...@acm.org wrote:

As point of comparison, merge this with prior info from Timothy (comments
after):
On 01/31/2013 08:32 AM, Don Williams wrote:
Interesting note from a list reader...

BTW David, IBM Main list membership is free. The only membership requirement
is to be interested in the list.

Don

-Original Message-
From: david kramf [mailto:dakr@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:56 AM
To: donb...@gmail.com
Subject: mainframe selling points

Hi Don,

My name is David Kramf .I picked your name as one of the participants to
this conversation that on the IBM mailing list digest. Hope I am not
intruding.

I am a very experienced MF developer . I quit my job several months ago to
do more interesting stuff and trying to develop on my own. This is
impossible to do on the MF
platform because the MF is not accessible . You need to invest about 5K to
10K just to to have it (legally ) on your personal pc based, and there is
no freely, updated and convenient
system where you can buy your virtual server at a reasonable price. ( I pay
20 dollars a month for a linux VS. This is a reasonable price ). So I
migrated myself to other platforms
(OS X , LINUX , RUBY ) where you can easily get access to development
platforms and can later distribute your product.
If IBM won't make an effort to open the MF platform for the huge multitude
of developers working and developing around the world on LINUX ,
smartphones , and tablets , then the MF is
doomed.

Thank You very much for reading , and I will be much obliged if you send
this message to the mailing list ( I am not a member myself ).
David Kramf
Tel-Aviv , ISRAEL =

On 01/30/2013 11:56 PM, Timothy Sipples wrote:
A couple points (and not new ones, but I guess they need repeating):

1. You don't need a zPDT, RUTz, or zEnterprise machine to develop and test
for z/OS and its middleware. In fact, in many cases you don't need to pay
even one dollar. IBM's PartnerWorld Validation Program for z/OS is one
notable example:

https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/stg_com_agr_zos

That's a real zEnterprise machine located in Dallas, as it happens. Free is
a rather good price!

Here's some more information:

https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/isv_com_tsp_iic_resources_systemz_remote_offerings

...

Timothy Sipples
Both of the alternatives Timothy mentions require a company with IBM
PartnerWorld membership. I may be misinterpreting the PartnerWorld
requirements, but my impression was that you had to be an software
vendor/developer to apply, not just be exploring whether you could develop
the capability for z/OS application development to become a z/OS
vendor/developer.Assuming that it would be possible for a small,
not-yet-established startup company to apply, the free Validation Program is
for a limited time (60 days), and although re-application sounds possible, it
also reads like acceptance is not guaranteed, and that this is intended for
development. The Remote Offerings option is not free but based on CP and
storage resource usage, with a minimal usage level and minimum monthly charge
of $550/month, which obviously doesn't compare very favorably with the
$20/month quoted cost of a Linux VM development platform.

I think the point made by David Kramf is well taken: that if you have a
sound concept for an application and are exploring starting out on your own
into application development, the more-than-an-order-of-magnitude increase in
up-front investment required to develop for the z/OS platform versus Linux is
a serious impediment to choosing z/OS as a platform, even if you already have
a z/OS skill set. One can perhaps make a valid argument that this guarantees
that companies marketing z/OS software must have a certain minimal size and
capability for product support that is appropriate to a platform where RAS is
of such great importance, but it also guarantees that most potential
developers and start-up software companies will choose alternative platforms.

--
Joel C. Ewing,Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Dana Mitchell

On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:07:20 -0500, Anne  Lynn Wheeler l...@garlic.com wrote:

A maxed out z196 with 80 processors  rating of 50BIPS goes for $28M or
$560,000/BIPS
snip
as I've mentioned several times, by comparison IBM has base list price
of $1815 for e5-2600 blade rated at 527BIPS 

So you are saying that a sub $2K blade has roughly 10 times raw compute power 
as an 80 way z196?

I'd be interested in references to support that.

Dana

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Mike Schwab

He is off by a figure of 10,000.

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Dana Mitchell mitchd...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:07:20 -0500, Anne  Lynn Wheeler l...@garlic.com 
 wrote:

A maxed out z196 with 80 processors  rating of 50BIPS goes for $28M or
$560,000/BIPS
 snip
as I've mentioned several times, by comparison IBM has base list price
of $1815 for e5-2600 blade rated at 527BIPS

 So you are saying that a sub $2K blade has roughly 10 times raw compute power 
 as an 80 way z196?

 I'd be interested in references to support that.

 Dana

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Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA
Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all?

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points

snip
 
 Well, the mainframe is doomed for those who think small.
 
 The mainframe is not the platform for small.
 
snip

Agreed, small apps that have no need to scale up, have no need for a
mainframe. 

Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be successful?

Don

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread David Devine

Looking at processor and software costs in isolation doesnt tell the whole 
story.

Yes, software cost are a big chunk, but doesnt Microsoft charge like a Rhino 
for each Windows licence? 
  
What would you attach your E5-2600 blade to and using what? fibre or ethernet? 
whose disk systems? tape for backup?  
how resilient is it? how many staff would it take to manage? 

The elephant in the room is reliability.
 
Z/series and associated kit is solid and dependable (baring a few exceptions) 
having grown ergonomically over 50 years.

How much down time do you get from windows or Unix farms? 
Would you risk running your key billing platform's on flaky kit? you can't send 
your bills out you can't get your money in.  

Cheap kit is cheap for any number of reasons, but often due to poor quality 
components, build processes and quality control as its working life is only 
expected to be a few years.

Ever been bitten by Tin whiskers from lead free solder? or duff capacitors?   
  
  
I recall an article from IEEE about 20 years ago looking at microsofts Hotmail 
service. 
Running on 200 quad4 pentiums, 10% were out of action at any given time.
The whole shebang could have run on 3 s390's with far better service to the 
customer. 

I doubt much has changed.  

Z/series has had such nice to have's as GDPS (about 10-15 years) multiple 
pathing to devices and system manged storage (25 +).
It's only in the last few years that other platforms have started to catch up 
in these area's and their idea of multiple paths is generally 2.
(This is a broad sweep, there may well be kit out there thats all singing and 
dancing)
(Ibm I series  P series could be classed as junior mainframes having evolved 
from System 34  36 (cut down System 360's) and are slwly getting Z/series 
features.)

Staff costs? 
once you've got a Z/series site setup which has skilled support staff (not 
including application programmers  developers) you can pretty much expand up 
to 10 times the kit and plex's (and probably a lot more) with minor staff 
increases if at all.

How many people does it take to manage windows or unix estates ? where i've 
worked over the years you are talking 4 or 5 times as many people as mainframe 
support staff. 
And thats just support. 

Once you include the dozens of Android, java  C++ developers and proggies you 
are going to need to actually produce something worthwhile, you can only afford 
to buy cheap kit!
   
This is why you need to consider Total cost of ownership and it is not solely 
limited to financial payback period and capital depreciation write off's; staff 
 running costs are often overlooked and reliability freqeuently is. 
  
Well thats my rant over for the moment.

TTFN 

Dave 

P.S yes, i am quite biased.

imugz...@gmail.com (Itschak Mugzach) writes:
 So why don't you save the money and run your corporate network from the
 mainframe ;-)

discussion in linkedin Enterprise Systems that 4% of IBM
revenue is mainframe hardware sales, but mainframe business is 25% of
total revenue ... for every dollar of hardware, customers are paying
$5.25 for software, services, and storage.  
http://lnkd.in/mjYX6H

A maxed out z196 with 80 processors  rating of 50BIPS goes for $28M or
$560,000/BIPS ... however, on avg. customers are paying total of $175M
(i.e. 6.25 times the base hardware cost, aka difference between 4% of
revenue for just hardware, but total of 25% revenue) ... or $3.5M/BIPS

as I've mentioned several times, by comparison IBM has base list price
of $1815 for e5-2600 blade rated at 527BIPS or $3.44/BIPS (a factor
of million times difference).

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
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Re: FW: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Edward Jaffe


On 1/31/2013 8:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:

Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be successful?


Depends on your definition of deep. Last I checked it was $500/month for 
fully-supported remote development out of Dallas.


--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread John McKown

I agree with your points! However, at least in my company the
definition of long range planning is next year's budget. We
literally will NOT sign ANY multi-year contract. Not even if a 3 year
contract for product X costs less over those three years than a single
year of a competing product Y. Gives you a good idea of management's
thoughts on our viability. Note, this applies to all systems: z,
Wintel, AIX, Solaris, Linux.

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 10:51 AM, David Devine david.dev...@sse.com wrote:
 Looking at processor and software costs in isolation doesnt tell the whole 
 story.

 Yes, software cost are a big chunk, but doesnt Microsoft charge like a Rhino 
 for each Windows licence?

 What would you attach your E5-2600 blade to and using what? fibre or 
 ethernet? whose disk systems? tape for backup?
 how resilient is it? how many staff would it take to manage?

 The elephant in the room is reliability.

 Z/series and associated kit is solid and dependable (baring a few exceptions) 
 having grown ergonomically over 50 years.

 How much down time do you get from windows or Unix farms?
 Would you risk running your key billing platform's on flaky kit? you can't 
 send your bills out you can't get your money in.

 Cheap kit is cheap for any number of reasons, but often due to poor quality 
 components, build processes and quality control as its working life is only 
 expected to be a few years.

 Ever been bitten by Tin whiskers from lead free solder? or duff capacitors?

 I recall an article from IEEE about 20 years ago looking at microsofts 
 Hotmail service.
 Running on 200 quad4 pentiums, 10% were out of action at any given time.
 The whole shebang could have run on 3 s390's with far better service to the 
 customer.

 I doubt much has changed.

 Z/series has had such nice to have's as GDPS (about 10-15 years) multiple 
 pathing to devices and system manged storage (25 +).
 It's only in the last few years that other platforms have started to catch up 
 in these area's and their idea of multiple paths is generally 2.
 (This is a broad sweep, there may well be kit out there thats all singing and 
 dancing)
 (Ibm I series  P series could be classed as junior mainframes having evolved 
 from System 34  36 (cut down System 360's) and are slwly getting 
 Z/series features.)

 Staff costs?
 once you've got a Z/series site setup which has skilled support staff (not 
 including application programmers  developers) you can pretty much expand up 
 to 10 times the kit and plex's (and probably a lot more) with minor staff 
 increases if at all.

 How many people does it take to manage windows or unix estates ? where i've 
 worked over the years you are talking 4 or 5 times as many people as 
 mainframe support staff.
 And thats just support.

 Once you include the dozens of Android, java  C++ developers and proggies 
 you are going to need to actually produce something worthwhile, you can only 
 afford to buy cheap kit!

 This is why you need to consider Total cost of ownership and it is not 
 solely limited to financial payback period and capital depreciation write 
 off's; staff  running costs are often overlooked and reliability freqeuently 
 is.

 Well thats my rant over for the moment.

 TTFN

 Dave

 P.S yes, i am quite biased.

imugz...@gmail.com (Itschak Mugzach) writes:
 So why don't you save the money and run your corporate network from the
 mainframe ;-)

discussion in linkedin Enterprise Systems that 4% of IBM
revenue is mainframe hardware sales, but mainframe business is 25% of
total revenue ... for every dollar of hardware, customers are paying
$5.25 for software, services, and storage.
http://lnkd.in/mjYX6H

A maxed out z196 with 80 processors  rating of 50BIPS goes for $28M or
$560,000/BIPS ... however, on avg. customers are paying total of $175M
(i.e. 6.25 times the base hardware cost, aka difference between 4% of
revenue for just hardware, but total of 25% revenue) ... or $3.5M/BIPS

as I've mentioned several times, by comparison IBM has base list price
of $1815 for e5-2600 blade rated at 527BIPS or $3.44/BIPS (a factor
of million times difference).

 --
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
 --
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-- 
Maranatha! 
John McKown

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Steve Thompson

From:   Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
Date:   01/31/2013 11:17 AM

On 1/31/2013 8:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:
 Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be 
successful?

Depends on your definition of deep. Last I checked it was $500/month for 

fully-supported remote development out of Dallas.

-
Let's play devil's advocate.

You have decided that you want to develop a product for z/OS. If you do 
not develop it in Java, or c/C++, then how do you do your development in 
your own sandbox? This, so that you only need, perhaps six months of 
fixing the rough spots on an actual z/OS system.

You can't get CICS in a Herc environment running MVS 3.8J (O now?). 

Let's say that you have FJ COBOL. So you set the options to be for 
COBOL-II. Now you do all your development that you can. But wait, you need 
ISPF at a minimum to drive terminals. Can't do that on a Herc system. Come 
to think of it, FJ COBOL will not generate for the Herc environment. So 
that option is gone too.

One programmer, who has roughed out a system, using VSAM or DB2, has, for 
the sake of argument, 2-3 man years of coding to do with debugging. So we 
will say 3 to include documenting and testing.

US$500 * 12 * 3 = US$19,500Just for the system out of Dallas.

What will be the cost of documenting your software, and who will do it at 
what cost? (manual printing or CD/DVD commercial quality stuff).

How much do you have to have in pocket to handle 3 years of start up 
expenses? Would that be somewhere around $200K?

Now, you need a paying client. What are your costs to get that first 
client and get them to production and you into maint mode and not 
development? How many clients do you need before you are covering your 
ongoing US$500/mo. and all of your start up costs, so that you have a 
positive cash flow?

Using your own home systems, how long does it take you to develop 
something in c/C++ .net, Java, etc. and be able to sell it?

For a one man startup, $200K is a lot of money. BTDT. And the business I 
had was NOT in IT.

Regards,
Steve Thompson

Opinions expressed by this poster do not necessarily reflect those of 
poster's employer.

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Charles Gillen

- Original Message -
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Sent: Thu Jan 31 12:37:25 2013
Subject: Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

From:   Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
Date:   01/31/2013 11:17 AM

On 1/31/2013 8:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:
 Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be 
successful?

Depends on your definition of deep. Last I checked it was $500/month for 

fully-supported remote development out of Dallas.

-
Let's play devil's advocate.

You have decided that you want to develop a product for z/OS. If you do 
not develop it in Java, or c/C++, then how do you do your development in 
your own sandbox? This, so that you only need, perhaps six months of 
fixing the rough spots on an actual z/OS system.

You can't get CICS in a Herc environment running MVS 3.8J (O now?). 

Let's say that you have FJ COBOL. So you set the options to be for 
COBOL-II. Now you do all your development that you can. But wait, you need 
ISPF at a minimum to drive terminals. Can't do that on a Herc system. Come 
to think of it, FJ COBOL will not generate for the Herc environment. So 
that option is gone too.

One programmer, who has roughed out a system, using VSAM or DB2, has, for 
the sake of argument, 2-3 man years of coding to do with debugging. So we 
will say 3 to include documenting and testing.

US$500 * 12 * 3 = US$19,500Just for the system out of Dallas.

What will be the cost of documenting your software, and who will do it at 
what cost? (manual printing or CD/DVD commercial quality stuff).

How much do you have to have in pocket to handle 3 years of start up 
expenses? Would that be somewhere around $200K?

Now, you need a paying client. What are your costs to get that first 
client and get them to production and you into maint mode and not 
development? How many clients do you need before you are covering your 
ongoing US$500/mo. and all of your start up costs, so that you have a 
positive cash flow?

Using your own home systems, how long does it take you to develop 
something in c/C++ .net, Java, etc. and be able to sell it?

For a one man startup, $200K is a lot of money. BTDT. And the business I 
had was NOT in IT.

Regards,
Steve Thompson

Opinions expressed by this poster do not necessarily reflect those of 
poster's employer.

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points

Joel,

Thanks. You have succinctly expressed my opinion.

Don

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Joel C. Ewing
 Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 11:06 AM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: FW: mainframe selling points
 
 As point of comparison, merge this with prior info from Timothy
 (comments after):
 On 01/31/2013 08:32 AM, Don Williams wrote:
  Interesting note from a list reader...
 
  BTW David, IBM Main list membership is free. The only membership
 requirement
  is to be interested in the list.
 
  Don
 
  -Original Message-
  From: david kramf [mailto:dakr@gmail.com]
  Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 4:56 AM
  To: donb...@gmail.com
  Subject: mainframe selling points
 
  Hi Don,
 
  My name is David Kramf .I picked your name as one of the participants
 to
  this conversation that on the  IBM mailing list digest. Hope I am not
  intruding.
 
  I am a very experienced MF developer . I quit my job several months
 ago to
  do more interesting stuff and trying to develop on my own. This is
  impossible to do on the MF
  platform because the MF is not accessible . You need to invest about
 5K to
  10K just to to have it  (legally ) on your personal pc based, and
 there is
  no freely, updated and convenient
  system where you can buy your virtual server at a reasonable price. (
 I pay
  20 dollars a month for a linux VS. This is a reasonable price ). So I
  migrated myself to other platforms
  (OS X , LINUX , RUBY ) where you can easily get access to development
  platforms and can later distribute your product.
  If IBM won't make an effort to open the MF platform for the huge
 multitude
  of developers working and  developing around the world on LINUX ,
  smartphones , and tablets , then the MF is
  doomed.
 
  Thank You very much for reading , and I will be much obliged if you
 send
  this message to the mailing list ( I am not a member myself ).
  David Kramf
  Tel-Aviv , ISRAEL =
 
 
  On 01/30/2013 11:56 PM, Timothy Sipples wrote:
  A couple points (and not new ones, but I guess they need repeating):
 
  1. You don't need a zPDT, RUTz, or zEnterprise machine to develop
 and test
  for z/OS and its middleware. In fact, in many cases you don't need
 to pay
  even one dollar. IBM's PartnerWorld Validation Program for z/OS is
 one
  notable example:
 
  https://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/stg_com_agr_zos
 
  That's a real zEnterprise machine located in Dallas, as it happens.
 Free is
  a rather good price!
 
  Here's some more information:
 
  https://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/isv_com_tsp_iic_res
 ources_systemz_remote_offerings
 
  ...
  
 
  Timothy Sipples
 Both of the alternatives Timothy mentions require a company with IBM
 PartnerWorld membership.  I may be misinterpreting the PartnerWorld
 requirements, but my impression was that you had to be an software
 vendor/developer to apply, not just be exploring whether you could
 develop the capability for z/OS application development to become a
 z/OS
 vendor/developer.Assuming that it would be possible for a small,
 not-yet-established startup company to apply, the free Validation
 Program is for a limited time (60 days), and although re-application
 sounds possible, it also reads like acceptance is not guaranteed, and
 that this is intended for development.  The Remote Offerings option
 is
 not free but based on CP and storage resource usage, with a minimal
 usage level and minimum monthly charge of $550/month, which obviously
 doesn't compare very favorably with the $20/month quoted cost of a
 Linux
 VM development platform.
 
 I think the point made by David Kramf is well taken:  that if you have
 a
 sound concept for an application and are exploring starting out on your
 own into application development, the more-than-an-order-of-magnitude
 increase in up-front investment required to develop for the z/OS
 platform versus Linux is a serious impediment to choosing z/OS as a
 platform, even if you already have a z/OS skill set.  One can perhaps
 make a valid argument that this guarantees that companies marketing
 z/OS
 software must have a certain minimal size and capability for product
 support that is appropriate to a platform where RAS is of such great
 importance, but it also guarantees that most potential developers and
 start-up software companies will choose alternative platforms.
 
 --
 Joel C. Ewing,Bentonville, AR   jcew...@acm.org
 
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Re: FW: mainframe selling points

Yes, deep and long are going to relative...
$500/month is only $6000/year, $18,000 for 3 years, $30,000 for 5 years. 

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Edward Jaffe
 Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 12:14 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: FW: mainframe selling points

 On 1/31/2013 8:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:
  Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be
 successful?

 Depends on your definition of deep. Last I checked it was $500/month
 for
 fully-supported remote development out of Dallas.

 --
 Edward E Jaffe
 Phoenix Software International, Inc
 831 Parkview Drive North
 El Segundo, CA 90245
 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler

mitchd...@gmail.com (Dana Mitchell) writes:
So you are saying that a sub $2K blade has roughly 10 times raw
compute power as an 80 way z196?

I'd be interested in references to support that.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#5 mainframe selling points

IBM publishes 50BIPS for 80-way z196

past post in ibm-main from last fall
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#59

quoting benchmarks numbers from this web page
http://www.istorya.net/forums/computer-hardware/485176-intel-xeon-e5-2690-and-e5-2660-8-core-sandy-bridge-ep-review.html

(Dhrystone)
E5-2690 @2.9GHZ 527.55BIPS
E5-2660 @2.2GHZ 428.15BIPS
X5690 @3.45GHZ 307.49BIPS
i7-3690 @4.78GHZ 288BIPS
AMD 6274 @2.4GHZ 272.73BIPS

(Whetstone)
e5-2690 @2.9GHZ 315GFLOPS
E5-2660 @2.2GHZ 263.7GFLOPS
X5690 @3.4GHZ 227GFLOPS
i7-3690 @4.78GHZ 176GFLOPS
AMD 6274 @2.4GHZ 168.11GFLOPS

... aka the e5-2600 at 527.55BIPS is also capable of 315GFLOPS

and from this recent post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#34
in Mainframe Experts discussion
http://lnkd.in/QhQ73A

including ibm results for lots of platforms (at the time as of
3july2012 ... now current as of 29Jan2003 ... IBM currently
has 873 bencmarks listed in the following ... none of them for
mainframe)
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/cint2006.html

risc chip/processors have had numerous performance features for the past
several decades that provided them with significant throughput
advantages over i86 chips. however, for the past several generations of
i86 chips, they have moved to risc cores with hardware layer that
translates i86 instructions into risc microops ... significantly closing
that throughput gap.

z10 was rated at 30BIPS with 64processors or 469MIPS/processor. z196 is
rated at 50BIPS with 80processors or 625MIPS/processor. The description
is that much of the improvement in z196 per processor performance was
introduction of some of the features that have been in risc processors
for decades (and are part of all the latest i86 processors). zEC12 is
rated at 75BIPS with 101processors or 743MIPS/processor ... with claims
that there have been some additonal risc-like features in the way the
zEC12 processors operate.

Part of the claim for the rapid advancement in i86 chip throughput is
there being competition between multiple vendors of i86 chips.

for other drift ... this ibm-main post references peak i/o throughput
benchmark for z196 using 104 FICON channels and 14 system assist
processors that achieves 2M 4k IOPS (although peak SAP all running at
100% is 2.2M and recommendations is to keep SAP utilization below 70% or
1.5M)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#4 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee

FICON is an enormously expensive protocol layer on top of FCS, that is
significantly slower than the the throughput of the underlying
fibre-channel standard technology. Above post reference announce of a
*single* FCS channel (aka technology used in FICON) for e5-2600 capable
of over 1M IOPS (two such FCS channels could give an e5-2600 the same
throughput as z196 peak i/o throughput with 104 FICON channels).

other recent posts here in ibm-main mentioning e5-2600 comparisons
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#20 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#28 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#30 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#34 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#51 Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of
Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#56 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#81 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#87 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#88 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#90 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#100 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#3 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#5 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#43 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#25 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off
Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler

david.dev...@sse.com (David Devine) writes:
 Looking at processor and software costs in isolation doesnt tell the whole 
 story.

 Yes, software cost are a big chunk, but doesnt Microsoft charge like a
 Rhino for each Windows licence?
   
 What would you attach your E5-2600 blade to and using what? fibre or
 ethernet? whose disk systems? tape for backup?
 how resilient is it? how many staff would it take to manage? 

 The elephant in the room is reliability.
  
 Z/series and associated kit is solid and dependable (baring a few
 exceptions) having grown ergonomically over 50 years.

 How much down time do you get from windows or Unix farms? 
 Would you risk running your key billing platform's on flaky kit? you
 can't send your bills out you can't get your money in.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#5 mainframe selling points
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#6 mainframe selling points

one of the things recently mentioned is that the large brand vendors
(HP, DELL, IBM, etc) are no longer the major consumer of i86 server
chips ... that the large cloud operators (both public and private) are
ordering chips directly and building out mega-datacenters with several
hundred thousand blade configurations (and millions of cores). There is
lot of similarity between the millions of core supercomputers and the
millions of core cloud operators. Periodic press is also that the cloud
operators are building their own blades at 1/3rd the price of brand name
blades (bring cost/BIP into the $1 range). The big cloud operators have
also done extensive work on choice of system components to optimize the
price/reliability, price/maintenance, price/adminstration, etc issues.

With the enormous drop in processing costs ... the large cloud operators
have also turned their attention to all the other operating costs that
are now starting to dominate ... maintenance, power, cooling,
administration, etc. With hundreds of thousands of blades and millions
of cores ... they have done an enormous amount of work optimizing all
these other costs. For the majority of the e5-2600 blades out there in
the large cloud operations (public  private), there are running various
flavors of Linux (significanlty reducing those costs) and have processes
where a relatively few people are able to operate a mega-datacenter with
millions of cores. With the lots of on-demand characteristic in many
cloud operations ... they are behind pushing for almost zero
powercooling while idle and able to be brought up to full operation
nearly instantaneously.

Guess is that any one of the numerous mega-datacenters around the world
has more processing power than the aggregate of all mainframes in the
world today.

For other drift ... real CKD disks haven't been manufactored for decades
... they are all done with simulation using the same disks that are used
by e5-2600 systems. Also as mentioned upthread ... native FCS has
enormously better throughput than when FICON is layered on top of FCS
... aka peak z196 I/O benchmark with 104 FICON channels at 2.2M IOPS
compared to announcement of a *single* native FCS for e5-2600 capable of
over 1M IOPS.

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Itschak Mugzach

I would like to return to the selling point issue. I stated that there
are many technologies that run better outside the mainframe like Cobol and
sort. Don't take my word, ask Gartner's Dale Vecchio. have a look at this
video on http://www.platformmodernization.org/Pages/about.asp

Itschak


On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Steve Thompson sthomp...@us.ibm.comwrote:

 From:   Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
 Date:   01/31/2013 11:17 AM



 On 1/31/2013 8:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:
  Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be
 successful?

 Depends on your definition of deep. Last I checked it was $500/month for

 fully-supported remote development out of Dallas.

 -
 Let's play devil's advocate.

 You have decided that you want to develop a product for z/OS. If you do
 not develop it in Java, or c/C++, then how do you do your development in
 your own sandbox? This, so that you only need, perhaps six months of
 fixing the rough spots on an actual z/OS system.

 You can't get CICS in a Herc environment running MVS 3.8J (O now?).

 Let's say that you have FJ COBOL. So you set the options to be for
 COBOL-II. Now you do all your development that you can. But wait, you need
 ISPF at a minimum to drive terminals. Can't do that on a Herc system. Come
 to think of it, FJ COBOL will not generate for the Herc environment. So
 that option is gone too.

 One programmer, who has roughed out a system, using VSAM or DB2, has, for
 the sake of argument, 2-3 man years of coding to do with debugging. So we
 will say 3 to include documenting and testing.

 US$500 * 12 * 3 = US$19,500Just for the system out of Dallas.

 What will be the cost of documenting your software, and who will do it at
 what cost? (manual printing or CD/DVD commercial quality stuff).

 How much do you have to have in pocket to handle 3 years of start up
 expenses? Would that be somewhere around $200K?

 Now, you need a paying client. What are your costs to get that first
 client and get them to production and you into maint mode and not
 development? How many clients do you need before you are covering your
 ongoing US$500/mo. and all of your start up costs, so that you have a
 positive cash flow?

 Using your own home systems, how long does it take you to develop
 something in c/C++ .net, Java, etc. and be able to sell it?

 For a one man startup, $200K is a lot of money. BTDT. And the business I
 had was NOT in IT.

 Regards,
 Steve Thompson

 Opinions expressed by this poster do not necessarily reflect those of
 poster's employer.

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Ron Wells

Gartner ??  they are and have been against M/F since the mid 80's...Even 
back then saying it was dead

From:   Itschak Mugzach imugz...@gmail.com
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Date:   01/31/2013 02:25 PM
Subject:Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs
Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

I would like to return to the selling point issue. I stated that there
are many technologies that run better outside the mainframe like Cobol and
sort. Don't take my word, ask Gartner's Dale Vecchio. have a look at this
video on http://www.platformmodernization.org/Pages/about.asp

Itschak

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Steve Thompson 
sthomp...@us.ibm.comwrote:

 From:   Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
 Date:   01/31/2013 11:17 AM

 On 1/31/2013 8:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:
  Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be
 successful?

 Depends on your definition of deep. Last I checked it was $500/month 
for

 fully-supported remote development out of Dallas.

 -
 Let's play devil's advocate.

 You have decided that you want to develop a product for z/OS. If you do
 not develop it in Java, or c/C++, then how do you do your development in
 your own sandbox? This, so that you only need, perhaps six months of
 fixing the rough spots on an actual z/OS system.

 You can't get CICS in a Herc environment running MVS 3.8J (O now?).

 Let's say that you have FJ COBOL. So you set the options to be for
 COBOL-II. Now you do all your development that you can. But wait, you 
need
 ISPF at a minimum to drive terminals. Can't do that on a Herc system. 
Come
 to think of it, FJ COBOL will not generate for the Herc environment. So
 that option is gone too.

 One programmer, who has roughed out a system, using VSAM or DB2, has, 
for
 the sake of argument, 2-3 man years of coding to do with debugging. So 
we
 will say 3 to include documenting and testing.

 US$500 * 12 * 3 = US$19,500Just for the system out of Dallas.

 What will be the cost of documenting your software, and who will do it 
at
 what cost? (manual printing or CD/DVD commercial quality stuff).

 How much do you have to have in pocket to handle 3 years of start up
 expenses? Would that be somewhere around $200K?

 Now, you need a paying client. What are your costs to get that first
 client and get them to production and you into maint mode and not
 development? How many clients do you need before you are covering your
 ongoing US$500/mo. and all of your start up costs, so that you have a
 positive cash flow?

 Using your own home systems, how long does it take you to develop
 something in c/C++ .net, Java, etc. and be able to sell it?

 For a one man startup, $200K is a lot of money. BTDT. And the business 
I
 had was NOT in IT.

 Regards,
 Steve Thompson

 Opinions expressed by this poster do not necessarily reflect those of
 poster's employer.

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Re: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

Gartner are well known being anti Mainframe, so I wouldn't be so quick to quote 
them, they are bias

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 31, 2013, at 3:25 PM, Itschak Mugzach imugz...@gmail.com wrote:

 I would like to return to the selling point issue. I stated that there
 are many technologies that run better outside the mainframe like Cobol and
 sort. Don't take my word, ask Gartner's Dale Vecchio. have a look at this
 video on http://www.platformmodernization.org/Pages/about.asp
 
 Itschak
 
 
 On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Steve Thompson sthomp...@us.ibm.comwrote:
 
 From:   Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
 Date:   01/31/2013 11:17 AM
 
 
 
 On 1/31/2013 8:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:
 Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be
 successful?
 
 Depends on your definition of deep. Last I checked it was $500/month for
 
 fully-supported remote development out of Dallas.
 
 -
 Let's play devil's advocate.
 
 You have decided that you want to develop a product for z/OS. If you do
 not develop it in Java, or c/C++, then how do you do your development in
 your own sandbox? This, so that you only need, perhaps six months of
 fixing the rough spots on an actual z/OS system.
 
 You can't get CICS in a Herc environment running MVS 3.8J (O now?).
 
 Let's say that you have FJ COBOL. So you set the options to be for
 COBOL-II. Now you do all your development that you can. But wait, you need
 ISPF at a minimum to drive terminals. Can't do that on a Herc system. Come
 to think of it, FJ COBOL will not generate for the Herc environment. So
 that option is gone too.
 
 One programmer, who has roughed out a system, using VSAM or DB2, has, for
 the sake of argument, 2-3 man years of coding to do with debugging. So we
 will say 3 to include documenting and testing.
 
 US$500 * 12 * 3 = US$19,500Just for the system out of Dallas.
 
 What will be the cost of documenting your software, and who will do it at
 what cost? (manual printing or CD/DVD commercial quality stuff).
 
 How much do you have to have in pocket to handle 3 years of start up
 expenses? Would that be somewhere around $200K?
 
 Now, you need a paying client. What are your costs to get that first
 client and get them to production and you into maint mode and not
 development? How many clients do you need before you are covering your
 ongoing US$500/mo. and all of your start up costs, so that you have a
 positive cash flow?
 
 Using your own home systems, how long does it take you to develop
 something in c/C++ .net, Java, etc. and be able to sell it?
 
 For a one man startup, $200K is a lot of money. BTDT. And the business I
 had was NOT in IT.
 
 Regards,
 Steve Thompson
 
 Opinions expressed by this poster do not necessarily reflect those of
 poster's employer.
 
 --
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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Edward Jaffe


On 1/31/2013 9:37 AM, Steve Thompson wrote:

One programmer, who has roughed out a system, using VSAM or DB2, has, for
the sake of argument, 2-3 man years of coding to do with debugging. So we
will say 3 to include documenting and testing.

US$500 * 12 * 3 = US$19,500Just for the system out of Dallas.


Having paid many tens of thousands of $ in my younger days on a per-CPU-second 
basis for time-sharing to develop my software ideas, a flat $500/month for 
multiple developers using a fully-supported, private z/OS system with the latest 
hardware, an exhaustive software stack, and expert technical support seems 
pretty darn reasonable to me!


By comparison, an MSDN Visual Studio Ultimate subscription from Microsoft is 
$13K + $5K/year PER DEVELOPER, doesn't include hardware or system configuration 
expertise, and provides only four tech support incidents per year.


--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Steve Thompson

From:   Itschak Mugzach imugz...@gmail.com
Date:   01/31/2013 02:26 PM

I would like to return to the selling point issue. I stated that there
are many technologies that run better outside the mainframe like Cobol and
sort. Don't take my word, ask Gartner's Dale Vecchio. have a look at this
video on http://www.platformmodernization.org/Pages/about.asp
SNIPPAGE

I think I will have to challenge this COBOL statement. Come to think of 
it, the SORT statement as well.

But first, how will they compare a COBOL program on a non-z/Architecture 
machine to a z/Architecture machine?

You will have to normalize the two machines to each other to determine if 
the one COBOL is faster than the other. But then, that rather obfuscates 
the whole point.

Take their mainframe slamming with a bag of salt.

Regards,
Steve Thompson

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Re: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

Also in these situations for needing more computing power and all the assorted 
goodies it helps to have management who are pro mainframe

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 31, 2013, at 3:31 PM, Ron Wells ron.we...@slfs.com wrote:

 Gartner ??  they are and have been against M/F since the mid 80's...Even 
 back then saying it was dead
 
 
 
 From:   Itschak Mugzach imugz...@gmail.com
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Date:   01/31/2013 02:25 PM
 Subject:Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs
 Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 
 
 
 I would like to return to the selling point issue. I stated that there
 are many technologies that run better outside the mainframe like Cobol and
 sort. Don't take my word, ask Gartner's Dale Vecchio. have a look at this
 video on http://www.platformmodernization.org/Pages/about.asp
 
 Itschak
 
 
 On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Steve Thompson 
 sthomp...@us.ibm.comwrote:
 
 From:   Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
 Date:   01/31/2013 11:17 AM
 
 
 
 On 1/31/2013 8:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:
 Does this mean a M/F developer needs to have deep pockets to be
 successful?
 
 Depends on your definition of deep. Last I checked it was $500/month
 for
 
 fully-supported remote development out of Dallas.
 
 -
 Let's play devil's advocate.
 
 You have decided that you want to develop a product for z/OS. If you do
 not develop it in Java, or c/C++, then how do you do your development in
 your own sandbox? This, so that you only need, perhaps six months of
 fixing the rough spots on an actual z/OS system.
 
 You can't get CICS in a Herc environment running MVS 3.8J (O now?).
 
 Let's say that you have FJ COBOL. So you set the options to be for
 COBOL-II. Now you do all your development that you can. But wait, you
 need
 ISPF at a minimum to drive terminals. Can't do that on a Herc system.
 Come
 to think of it, FJ COBOL will not generate for the Herc environment. So
 that option is gone too.
 
 One programmer, who has roughed out a system, using VSAM or DB2, has,
 for
 the sake of argument, 2-3 man years of coding to do with debugging. So
 we
 will say 3 to include documenting and testing.
 
 US$500 * 12 * 3 = US$19,500Just for the system out of Dallas.
 
 What will be the cost of documenting your software, and who will do it
 at
 what cost? (manual printing or CD/DVD commercial quality stuff).
 
 How much do you have to have in pocket to handle 3 years of start up
 expenses? Would that be somewhere around $200K?
 
 Now, you need a paying client. What are your costs to get that first
 client and get them to production and you into maint mode and not
 development? How many clients do you need before you are covering your
 ongoing US$500/mo. and all of your start up costs, so that you have a
 positive cash flow?
 
 Using your own home systems, how long does it take you to develop
 something in c/C++ .net, Java, etc. and be able to sell it?
 
 For a one man startup, $200K is a lot of money. BTDT. And the business
 I
 had was NOT in IT.
 
 Regards,
 Steve Thompson
 
 Opinions expressed by this poster do not necessarily reflect those of
 poster's employer.
 
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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Thomas David Rivers


Steve Thompson wrote:



Using your own home systems, how long does it take you to develop 
something in c/C++ .net, Java, etc. and be able to sell it?


For a one man startup, $200K is a lot of money. BTDT. And the business I 
had was NOT in IT.


Regards,
Steve Thompson

 



Steve,

Dignus does offer Windows/Linux licenses of its cross-platform
software (Systems/ASM, Systems/C and Systems/C++.)  


That may help offset some of the start-up costs, depending on
how you can get access to a mainframe.

For example - many people have negotiated access to their
first customer's system for a (significant) discount on the
software. 


Thus, you can use Dignus software to develop on your
Windows/Linux box and use your first customer's mainframe
to accomplish the testing.

That can really lower the barrier to entry for mainframe
development.

Note, your issues aren't limited to mainframe software
development... consider opening a restuarant... you have
to acquire the kitchen equiptment, lease/purchase the space,
do significant advertising, etc... before you sell the first
plate of food.   Every start-up enterprise requires a non-trivial
initial investment. 


- Dave Rivers -

--
riv...@dignus.comWork: (919) 676-0847
Get your mainframe programming tools at http://www.dignus.com

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Steve Thompson

From:   Thomas David Rivers riv...@dignus.com
To: IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu, 
Date:   01/31/2013 03:42 PM
Subject:Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs
Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu

Steve Thompson wrote:

Using your own home systems, how long does it take you to develop 
something in c/C++ .net, Java, etc. and be able to sell it?

For a one man startup, $200K is a lot of money. BTDT. And the business 
I 
had was NOT in IT.

Regards,
Steve Thompson

SNIPPAGE

 Note, your issues aren't limited to mainframe software
 development... consider opening a restuarant... you have
 to acquire the kitchen equiptment, lease/purchase the space,
 do significant advertising, etc... before you sell the first
 plate of food.   Every start-up enterprise requires a non-trivial
 initial investment. 
SNIPPAGE

Software development is the only industry that I know of that has such a 
long startup time. Ok, maybe building your own plane takes longer. 

But since you ask, in an indirect way, I got into the business of 
dismantling old timber framed barns for re-erection. We had to buy 
commercial vehicles (which is why I have a CDL: A to this day.), get a DOT 
number, etc. Our cash flow was affected by the weather (ever try to start 
a diesel engine at -12F?). But, we had revenue within 30 days of start up.

You won't do that with software. At least not in my experience. But when I 
see someone trying to get 10,000 (pick the small animal of your choice) to 
pull a plow instead of two good draft horses (yes I have plowed with 
horses, once. I love a good tractor), I tend to mention the problem. 

Regards,
Steve Thompson

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread John McKown

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Steve Thompson sthomp...@us.ibm.com wrote:
 From:   Thomas David Rivers riv...@dignus.com
 To: IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu,
 Date:   01/31/2013 03:42 PM
 Subject:Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs
 Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@listserv.ua.edu
snip
 You won't do that with software. At least not in my experience. But when I
 see someone trying to get 10,000 (pick the small animal of your choice) to
 pull a plow instead of two good draft horses (yes I have plowed with
 horses, once. I love a good tractor), I tend to mention the problem.

Perhaps, like current supercomputers, you need to invent the MPP for
the mice? In this case MPP stands for Massively Parallel Plows.

I will admit that I don't know if current business practices are
really set up for computer MPP. But, then again, a MPP RMDS could
distribute something like: UPDATE TABLE SET COLUMN=1.1*COLUMN over
multiple processors. Of course, there is still a problem with memory
interference or disk drive interference. Sometimes nothing beats a
fast CP and fast I/O to a single fast disk (or use a PCIe attached
SSD).

 Regards,
 Steve Thompson

 Opinions expressed by this poster may not reflect those of poster's
 employer.

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John McKown

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Andrew Rowley


On 1/02/2013 7:53, Edward Jaffe wrote:


By comparison, an MSDN Visual Studio Ultimate subscription from
Microsoft is $13K + $5K/year PER DEVELOPER, doesn't include hardware or
system configuration expertise, and provides only four tech support
incidents per year.


That is the very top end cost... there are many cheaper options, 
including free Express versions of the compiler.


And for startups, Microsoft has the BizSpark program which provides 
pretty much everything for developing on Windows free for 3 years, for 
organizations less than 5 years old and with revenue less than one 
million dollars.


That program was designed to counter exactly this problem - startups 
developing on other platforms because they were cheaper e.g. free.


Andrew Rowley

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Re: FW: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread Andrew Rowley


On 1/02/2013 8:40, Thomas David Rivers wrote:


Note, your issues aren't limited to mainframe software
development... consider opening a restuarant... you have
to acquire the kitchen equiptment, lease/purchase the space,
do significant advertising, etc... before you sell the first
plate of food.   Every start-up enterprise requires a non-trivial
initial investment.


Certainly, other businesses have greater startup costs. However, it is 
not really relevant when comparing software costs across different 
platforms.


In the last 5-10 years the area of software startups has undergone a 
revolution (not all good - the economics of smartphone apps for a dollar 
don't make sense) and on most platforms the cost to develop an idea is 
very low.


You could easily get started for an outlay of less than $1000.

This guy developed and launched a product with an initial budget of $60, 
mainly to see if it could be done:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/

Andrew Rowley


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Re: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

It's really hard to compare the PC world to the mainframe world. Not only the 
hardware is different so is the opsys, unless your running Linux/Unix and not 
Windoze. The programmer or admin as ppl call them think differently.

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 31, 2013, at 5:19 PM, Andrew Rowley and...@blackhillsoftware.com wrote:

 On 1/02/2013 7:53, Edward Jaffe wrote:
 
 By comparison, an MSDN Visual Studio Ultimate subscription from
 Microsoft is $13K + $5K/year PER DEVELOPER, doesn't include hardware or
 system configuration expertise, and provides only four tech support
 incidents per year.
 
 That is the very top end cost... there are many cheaper options, including 
 free Express versions of the compiler.
 
 And for startups, Microsoft has the BizSpark program which provides pretty 
 much everything for developing on Windows free for 3 years, for organizations 
 less than 5 years old and with revenue less than one million dollars.
 
 That program was designed to counter exactly this problem - startups 
 developing on other platforms because they were cheaper e.g. free.
 
 Andrew Rowley
 
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 and...@blackhillsoftware.com
 +61 413 302 386
 
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Re: mainframe selling points -- Start up Costs

2013-01-31 Thread David Crayford

On 01/02/2013, at 4:53 AM, Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com wrote:

 On 1/31/2013 9:37 AM, Steve Thompson wrote:
 One programmer, who has roughed out a system, using VSAM or DB2, has, for
 the sake of argument, 2-3 man years of coding to do with debugging. So we
 will say 3 to include documenting and testing.
 
 US$500 * 12 * 3 = US$19,500Just for the system out of Dallas.
 
 Having paid many tens of thousands of $ in my younger days on a 
 per-CPU-second basis for time-sharing to develop my software ideas, a flat 
 $500/month for multiple developers using a fully-supported, private z/OS 
 system with the latest hardware, an exhaustive software stack, and expert 
 technical support seems pretty darn reasonable to me!
 
 By comparison, an MSDN Visual Studio Ultimate subscription from Microsoft is 
 $13K + $5K/year PER DEVELOPER, doesn't include hardware or system 
 configuration expertise, and provides only four tech support incidents per 
 year.
 
 -- 


Ultimate comes with access to azure and a whole plethora of cloud based 
services. Seems like good value to me. Especially when compared to RD/z. 


 Edward E Jaffe
 Phoenix Software International, Inc
 831 Parkview Drive North
 El Segundo, CA 90245
 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)

In
CAOdPEgTRXHNjjugN1YnV7MS=cmsfnspupryn48tqid4ge1d...@mail.gmail.com,
on 01/31/2013
   at 07:13 AM, Itschak Mugzach imugz...@gmail.com said:

I don't think that the writer of the document (Dr. Rubin) compares
apples to apples. IBM mainframe does not operate the network (DNS,
DHCP, AD, email servers and many other base services).

What is SMTP, chopped liver? To say nothing of the ported tools.

Admittedly IBM has dropped some of the pieces in z/OS, and has some
silly restrictions. But to say IBM mainframe does not operate the
network is a gross exaggeration. 

-- 
 Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
 Atid/2http://patriot.net/~shmuel
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-31 Thread Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)

In
of331a752d.ac67612e-on48257b02.00201500-48257b02.00211...@sg.ibm.com,
on 01/29/2013
   at 02:01 PM, Timothy Sipples sipp...@sg.ibm.com said:

With respect to the application discussion, I generally agree.
Fundamentally IBM is keeping pace or even leading in providing all
popular (and even not-so-popular) application hosting environments 
on zEnterprise,

Perl 5.8.7 is rather long in the tooth; I'd expect z/OS to be off the
table for any application that uses Perl.

-- 
 Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
 Atid/2http://patriot.net/~shmuel
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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Re: mainframe selling points

Does version of Perl work on z/OS ..

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlos390.html

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Feb 1, 2013, at 12:59 AM, Paul Gilmartin paulgboul...@aim.com wrote:

 On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:16:04 -0500, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:
 
 Perl 5.8.7 is rather long in the tooth; I'd expect z/OS to be off the
 table for any application that uses Perl.
 I understand this is partly a consequence of a conflict between Unicode
 and EBCDIC.  Any hope of building a more recent Perl in Enhanced ASCII
 mode and relying somewhat on autoconversion?
 
 -- gil
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

No sysplex? How does a vendor test rolling installation/maintenance across a
sysplex for 24x7 uptime?

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of David Crayford
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 1:27 AM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

 On 30/01/2013 1:07 PM, Don Williams wrote:
  Hi Scott,

  While I've heard of zPDT, I don't really know/understand what is does
 or
  offers a vendor.  Sounds like zPDT is an affordable and effective
 platform.
  Too bad some vendor did not use it to develop an z/OS EMR package for
  hospitals that already have a z/OS infrastructure.

 It offers vendors who have no need for a sysplex a cheap
 development/testing/demo environment that they can run on a laptop,
 desktop or rack server.
 It would be interesting to see how it measures up running a production
 workload on the latest x86 iron like
 http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/enterprise/x3850x5/specs.html
 compared to a business class mainframe like a z114.

  Don

  -Original Message-
  From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-
 m...@listserv.ua.edu]
  On Behalf Of Scott Ford
  Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 5:23 PM
  To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
  Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

  Don,

  Dude a lot of vendors, like ourselves run Z/Pdt

  Scott ford
  www.identityforge.com

  Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
  I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb

  On Jan 29, 2013, at 2:39 PM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:

  Hi John,

  System z is not cheap (does it start around $1M?).  I expect the
  traditional
  mainframe operating systems, like z/OS, z/VM, etc., to have a
  significant
  price tag.  I'm not sure what the pricing is for the zLinux variety
  of
  operating system. Free does not get you business class support.
 Add
  to that
  the environment, DASD, etc., it's hard for the startup vendor to
 put
  all
  that in his garage :-)

  It seems like they are trying to prevent the creation of smaller
 more
  affordable mainframes.  What happened to P/390, FLEX-ES?  Is
 there
  any way
  to legally run z/OS on Hercules?  If a small vendor needs coupling
  facilities, I think he is out of luck.

  Don

  -Original Message-
  From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-
  m...@listserv.ua.edu]
  On Behalf Of John McKown
  Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:42 AM
  To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
  Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

  I am not sure, but the PC in impinging on the z in many ways. IMO,
  one
  reason is that some very creative people can afford their own PC
 and
  tools (especially if they use Linux). The investment is very low
  compared to a z. And the vendor can then market the product to
  many
  more people. Most every office in the world has PC class servers.
  Take
  the EMR package. If it is priced correctly and easy to use, then
 the
  market into local doctor's offices is immense compared to, say,
 only
  into a major hospital (which could possibly afford a z). I know my
  personal doctor has some sort of PC based software. I see them
 (and
  my
  dentist) using it. And the doctor no longer writes physical
  prescriptions. He just enters it into his laptop; it then ends up
  going to my pharmacy; and they send a text to my phone when it is
  ready to pick up. I really don't see much of any reason for
  application level code on the z any more. Things like DB2,
 maybe.
  But CICS? Sorry, it is simply easier to create a web based
  transaction using WAS or JBOSS or Tomcat on a server. Doing so is
  more
  cost efficient for our size (and shrinking) business. The only
  reason
  we continue with CICS/COBOL is that we do incremental changes. We
  don't have the money to convert from CICS or batch COBOL to
  something
  else (likely Microsoft .NET based shudder/).

  On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
  wrote:
  In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to
  work
  with
  IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase
  out
  their
  mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based
  servers.
  For
  various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look
  for
  a new
  Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
  understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on
  the
  z/OS
  platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who
 chose
  to
  develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that
  successful
  vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not
 chosing
  z/OS,
  why not?
  --
  Maranatha! 
  John McKown

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Re: mainframe selling points

I'm not an EMR expert either, but to the hospital the EMR application is
actually far more than simply medical record keeping.  There are a wide
range of departments or clinics (e.g., pediatrics, pharmacy, oncology,
emergency room, and on and on). The doctors and nurses in each department
have different and conflicting requirements.  Then there are legal
requirements like having the appropriate governmental certifications to
ensure the hospital is eligible to receive Medicare payments, etc.
Therefore, the hospital was looking and selected an EMR application on
steroids.  

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 2:07 AM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 I'm not an EMR expert, but here's an EMR application (for Linux on z):
 
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=46233
 http://www.oemr.org
 
 FIS Global's GT.M is also now available on both z/OS and Linux on z,
 and
 that's one of the two possible commercial runtime environments for
 applications such as VistA and the rather large portfolio of M/MUMPS
 applications. More information here:
 
 http://tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/articles/GTM_on_z_OS.html
 http://www.fisglobal.com/products-technologyplatforms-gtm
 
 This solution also looks relevant:
 
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=48085
 
 SAP seems to be getting into the EMR business, although I'm not
 familiar
 with their EMR solutions. SAP backends support z/OS and Linux on z
 quite
 well, though.
 
 Here are some more that look like they're in the EMR category (for
 Linux on
 z):
 
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=46473
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=14250
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=47562
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=44636
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=43293
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=44057
 http://www-
 304.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/solutiondetails.do?solution=16234
 
 This search was not exhaustive, nor did I do any particular searching
 for
 EMR-related applications that support DB2 for z/OS and DB2 for Linux on
 z.
 
 ---
 -
 Timothy Sipples
 Consulting Enterprise IT Architect (Based in Singapore)
 E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com
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Re: mainframe selling points

David,

That would e interesting . I worked on a PC500 solution, where it was OS/2 
based running MVS at that time. It was at the end of a T1, with a 3800 channel 
attached to it. It was a big print server and worked very well.

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 30, 2013, at 1:27 AM, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 30/01/2013 1:07 PM, Don Williams wrote:
 Hi Scott,
 
 While I've heard of zPDT, I don't really know/understand what is does or
 offers a vendor.  Sounds like zPDT is an affordable and effective platform.
 Too bad some vendor did not use it to develop an z/OS EMR package for
 hospitals that already have a z/OS infrastructure.
 
 
 It offers vendors who have no need for a sysplex a cheap 
 development/testing/demo environment that they can run on a laptop, desktop 
 or rack server.
 It would be interesting to see how it measures up running a production 
 workload on the latest x86 iron like 
 http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/enterprise/x3850x5/specs.html
 compared to a business class mainframe like a z114.
 
 
 Don
 
 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Scott Ford
 Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 5:23 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Don,
 
 Dude a lot of vendors, like ourselves run Z/Pdt
 
 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 
 Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
 I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
 On Jan 29, 2013, at 2:39 PM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Hi John,
 
 System z is not cheap (does it start around $1M?).  I expect the
 traditional
 mainframe operating systems, like z/OS, z/VM, etc., to have a
 significant
 price tag.  I'm not sure what the pricing is for the zLinux variety
 of
 operating system. Free does not get you business class support.  Add
 to that
 the environment, DASD, etc., it's hard for the startup vendor to put
 all
 that in his garage :-)
 
 It seems like they are trying to prevent the creation of smaller more
 affordable mainframes.  What happened to P/390, FLEX-ES?  Is there
 any way
 to legally run z/OS on Hercules?  If a small vendor needs coupling
 facilities, I think he is out of luck.
 
 Don
 
 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-
 m...@listserv.ua.edu]
 On Behalf Of John McKown
 Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:42 AM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 I am not sure, but the PC in impinging on the z in many ways. IMO,
 one
 reason is that some very creative people can afford their own PC and
 tools (especially if they use Linux). The investment is very low
 compared to a z. And the vendor can then market the product to
 many
 more people. Most every office in the world has PC class servers.
 Take
 the EMR package. If it is priced correctly and easy to use, then the
 market into local doctor's offices is immense compared to, say, only
 into a major hospital (which could possibly afford a z). I know my
 personal doctor has some sort of PC based software. I see them (and
 my
 dentist) using it. And the doctor no longer writes physical
 prescriptions. He just enters it into his laptop; it then ends up
 going to my pharmacy; and they send a text to my phone when it is
 ready to pick up. I really don't see much of any reason for
 application level code on the z any more. Things like DB2, maybe.
 But CICS? Sorry, it is simply easier to create a web based
 transaction using WAS or JBOSS or Tomcat on a server. Doing so is
 more
 cost efficient for our size (and shrinking) business. The only
 reason
 we continue with CICS/COBOL is that we do incremental changes. We
 don't have the money to convert from CICS or batch COBOL to
 something
 else (likely Microsoft .NET based shudder/).
 
 
 On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to
 work
 with
 IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase
 out
 their
 mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based
 servers.
 For
 various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look
 for
 a new
 Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
 understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on
 the
 z/OS
 platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who chose
 to
 develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that
 successful
 vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not chosing
 z/OS,
 why not?
 --
 Maranatha! 
 John McKown
 
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Dana Mitchell

zPDT may work well for develpoment, but it's the classic catch-22 situation  
since IBM doesn't provide a viable entry level platform for actually *running* 
such an application.  I'm sure zPDT comes mired in rules about what kind of 
work can and cannot be run  on it. 

While wearing my IBM i hat this week,  I'm looking at a quote for an IBM Power 
7,  720 6 core machine,  64GB of memory,  5TB of internal disk behind two pair 
of 1.8GB cache adaptors.  All this hardware comes in well under $100K.That 
would be a very good sized z/OS installation if it could run on there,  and of 
course the Power 7 hardware can be had in much smaller footprints as well.

Dana

On Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:27:15 +0800, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com wrote:

On 30/01/2013 1:07 PM, Don Williams wrote:
 Hi Scott,

 While I've heard of zPDT, I don't really know/understand what is does or
 offers a vendor.  Sounds like zPDT is an affordable and effective platform.
 Too bad some vendor did not use it to develop an z/OS EMR package for
 hospitals that already have a z/OS infrastructure.


It offers vendors who have no need for a sysplex a cheap
development/testing/demo environment that they can run on a laptop,
desktop or rack server.
It would be interesting to see how it measures up running a production
workload on the latest x86 iron like
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/enterprise/x3850x5/specs.html
compared to a business class mainframe like a z114.


 Don

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Edward Jaffe


On 1/29/2013 10:27 PM, David Crayford wrote:
It offers vendors who have no need for a sysplex a cheap 
development/testing/demo environment that they can run on a laptop, desktop or 
rack server.


As of December 2010, zPDT supports virtual coupling facilities for z/OS guests 
running under z/VM.


--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Norman.Hollander

It does require the correct version of z/VM (more current is better), and
current support code for the 1090,
Downloadable from the zPDT site.  There is a ADCD version that has the
volumes are setup for z/VM and z/OS
Sysplex.  Works pretty well if you have enough horsepower, RAM, and
processors on your PC.

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Edward Jaffe
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 9:03 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

On 1/29/2013 10:27 PM, David Crayford wrote:
 It offers vendors who have no need for a sysplex a cheap 
 development/testing/demo environment that they can run on a laptop, 
 desktop or rack server.

As of December 2010, zPDT supports virtual coupling facilities for z/OS
guests running under z/VM.

--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

Dana,

Not sure what your referring to here. We can run DB2  and CICS ..

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 30, 2013, at 10:03 AM, Dana Mitchell mitchd...@gmail.com wrote:

 zPDT may work well for develpoment, but it's the classic catch-22 situation  
 since IBM doesn't provide a viable entry level platform for actually 
 *running* such an application.  I'm sure zPDT comes mired in rules about what 
 kind of work can and cannot be run  on it. 
 
 While wearing my IBM i hat this week,  I'm looking at a quote for an IBM 
 Power 7,  720 6 core machine,  64GB of memory,  5TB of internal disk behind 
 two pair of 1.8GB cache adaptors.  All this hardware comes in well under 
 $100K.That would be a very good sized z/OS installation if it could run 
 on there,  and of course the Power 7 hardware can be had in much smaller 
 footprints as well.
 
 Dana
 
 On Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:27:15 +0800, David Crayford dcrayf...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 On 30/01/2013 1:07 PM, Don Williams wrote:
 Hi Scott,
 
 While I've heard of zPDT, I don't really know/understand what is does or
 offers a vendor.  Sounds like zPDT is an affordable and effective platform.
 Too bad some vendor did not use it to develop an z/OS EMR package for
 hospitals that already have a z/OS infrastructure.
 
 
 It offers vendors who have no need for a sysplex a cheap
 development/testing/demo environment that they can run on a laptop,
 desktop or rack server.
 It would be interesting to see how it measures up running a production
 workload on the latest x86 iron like
 http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/enterprise/x3850x5/specs.html
 compared to a business class mainframe like a z114.
 
 
 Don
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread John McKown

From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software development
activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not production
work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I guess
they could do QA testing.

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Scott Ford scott_j_f...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Dana,

 Not sure what your referring to here. We can run DB2  and CICS ..

 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com

-- 
Maranatha! 
John McKown

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Edward Jaffe


On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:

From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software development
activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not production
work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I guess
they could do QA testing.


zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the same 
technology) is for customers.


http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/

--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Tony Harminc

On 30 January 2013 13:34, Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com wrote:
 On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:

 From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software development
 activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not production
 work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
 onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I guess
 they could do QA testing.


 zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the same
 technology) is for customers.

 http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/

Sure, but for customers to do development and testing only. Absolutely
no production, or even production-like builds. Still no low-end zArch
machines for a small company to run prod on.

Tony H.

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Joel C. Ewing


On 01/30/2013 12:34 PM, Edward Jaffe wrote:

On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:

From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software development
activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not production
work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I guess
they could do QA testing.


zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the same 
technology) is for customers.


http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/


From the RDT reference cited:
'The Program may not be used to run production workloads of any kind, 
nor more robust development workloads including without limitation 
production module builds, pre-production testing, stress testing, or 
performance testing.


So neither zPDT nor RDT may be used for any production workload, or 
even a workload that attempts to emulate a production workload.  Sounds 
too restrictive to me - how could you legally debug  and fix application 
problems that only show up under stress if you are a developer and this 
is your only z/OS machine?


--
Joel C. Ewing,Bentonville, AR   jcew...@acm.org 

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread John McKown

You, like the name for the Sun, are SOL.

We actually had something like this happen to us. A vendor supplied a
CICS system level product to us. It worked fine in Test and Model
Office. When I installed it in Production, it consistently brought the
region down. This was due to the fact that our production CICS was
significantly more active and DSA was always nearly 100% allocated.
They couldn't reproduce. I reproduced the problem and even wrote a
patch to fix it (they gave us source). It was a random 4 byte memory
overlay due to a race condition. My work with their developer resolved
the problem and got us a year's free maintenance.

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Joel C. Ewing jcew...@acm.org wrote:
snip
 From the RDT reference cited:
 'The Program may not be used to run production workloads of any kind, nor
 more robust development workloads including without limitation production
 module builds, pre-production testing, stress testing, or performance
 testing.

 So neither zPDT nor RDT may be used for any production workload, or even a
 workload that attempts to emulate a production workload.  Sounds too
 restrictive to me - how could you legally debug  and fix application
 problems that only show up under stress if you are a developer and this is
 your only z/OS machine?

 --
 Joel C. Ewing,Bentonville, AR   jcew...@acm.org

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-- 
Maranatha! 
John McKown

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Re: mainframe selling points

Tony,

Whoever said IBM was price competitive, they are re only game in town , as far 
as big iron goes

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 30, 2013, at 2:09 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote:

 On 30 January 2013 13:34, Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com wrote:
 On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:
 
 From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software development
 activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not production
 work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
 onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I guess
 they could do QA testing.
 
 
 zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the same
 technology) is for customers.
 
 http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/
 
 Sure, but for customers to do development and testing only. Absolutely
 no production, or even production-like builds. Still no low-end zArch
 machines for a small company to run prod on.
 
 Tony H.
 
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 For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
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Re: mainframe selling points

For now, IBM has legacy customers over a barrel and can demand a high price
for the mainframe hardware and operating systems. But for developers of new
apps, they can choose a different platform, esp. if they believe that their
customers will purchase whatever platform it takes to run them. I think
eventually (i.e., over decades) legacy applications will be replaced with
newer slicker apps that don't require IBM's big iron.  Hmm, in the decades
to come, will IBM be able to continue to command a high price for its big
iron?  Will employees who work with big iron continue to be well paid?

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Scott Ford
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 3:04 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Tony,
 
 Whoever said IBM was price competitive, they are re only game in town ,
 as far as big iron goes
 
 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 
 Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
 I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
 On Jan 30, 2013, at 2:09 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote:
 
  On 30 January 2013 13:34, Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
 wrote:
  On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:
 
  From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software
 development
  activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not
 production
  work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
  onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I
 guess
  they could do QA testing.
 
 
  zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the
 same
  technology) is for customers.
 
  http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/
 
  Sure, but for customers to do development and testing only.
 Absolutely
  no production, or even production-like builds. Still no low-end zArch
  machines for a small company to run prod on.
 
  Tony H.
 
  -
 -
  For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
  send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-
 MAIN
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

Don,

What's really disconcerting is that the z/OS knowledge base is disappearing. 
JVM isn't the end all in languages. I write a lot of an gauges, including C. 
Yes, I am a big Linux fan

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 30, 2013, at 4:08 PM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:

 For now, IBM has legacy customers over a barrel and can demand a high price
 for the mainframe hardware and operating systems. But for developers of new
 apps, they can choose a different platform, esp. if they believe that their
 customers will purchase whatever platform it takes to run them. I think
 eventually (i.e., over decades) legacy applications will be replaced with
 newer slicker apps that don't require IBM's big iron.  Hmm, in the decades
 to come, will IBM be able to continue to command a high price for its big
 iron?  Will employees who work with big iron continue to be well paid?
 
 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Scott Ford
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 3:04 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Tony,
 
 Whoever said IBM was price competitive, they are re only game in town ,
 as far as big iron goes
 
 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 
 Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
 I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
 On Jan 30, 2013, at 2:09 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote:
 
 On 30 January 2013 13:34, Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
 wrote:
 On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:
 
 From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software
 development
 activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not
 production
 work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
 onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I
 guess
 they could do QA testing.
 
 
 zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the
 same
 technology) is for customers.
 
 http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/
 
 Sure, but for customers to do development and testing only.
 Absolutely
 no production, or even production-like builds. Still no low-end zArch
 machines for a small company to run prod on.
 
 Tony H.
 
 -
 -
 For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
 send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-
 MAIN
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Ron Wells

Big Iron...bad label...

This is why Zseries...z/OS--z/VM--Linux...as for expensive? ...TCO...vs 
many many many of other platform(s) Lic fees so on..maint.
as like anything else .. depending on your needs depends on the size of 
the Hardware you may need...as for the size.. you can always grow when you 
have to without reinstalling the world..including staffing..

as for M/Fers being well paid..sort ofbut there are not as many of us 
required at that site for support.

other factors as well...security..DR..
as for newer slicker apps  again...this all can be performed on the M/F 
as well..
and customers are not over a barrel...the alternatives you lead to are 
there on the Zseries..negative's mention for the mainframe?---Zseries? -- 
sorry to say is bogus. Too many Companies today see the advantages and are 
taking them. as for high price you mention..depending on the vendor 
yes..but there are alternatives even IBM.. 
Linux being the high points these days has made the Zseries even more of a 
$$ savings opportunity .

others can add to this list..done pitching...
 




From:   Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Date:   01/30/2013 03:09 PM
Subject:Re: mainframe selling points
Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU



For now, IBM has legacy customers over a barrel and can demand a high 
price
for the mainframe hardware and operating systems. But for developers of 
new
apps, they can choose a different platform, esp. if they believe that 
their
customers will purchase whatever platform it takes to run them. I think
eventually (i.e., over decades) legacy applications will be replaced with
newer slicker apps that don't require IBM's big iron.  Hmm, in the decades
to come, will IBM be able to continue to command a high price for its big
iron?  Will employees who work with big iron continue to be well paid?

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Scott Ford
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 3:04 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Tony,
 
 Whoever said IBM was price competitive, they are re only game in town ,
 as far as big iron goes
 
 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 
 Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
 I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
 On Jan 30, 2013, at 2:09 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote:
 
  On 30 January 2013 13:34, Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
 wrote:
  On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:
 
  From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software
 development
  activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not
 production
  work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
  onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I
 guess
  they could do QA testing.
 
 
  zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the
 same
  technology) is for customers.
 
  http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/
 
  Sure, but for customers to do development and testing only.
 Absolutely
  no production, or even production-like builds. Still no low-end zArch
  machines for a small company to run prod on.
 
  Tony H.
 
  -
 -
  For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
  send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-
 MAIN
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Edward Jaffe


On 1/30/2013 1:32 PM, Dana Mitchell wrote:

Thanks Tony! thats exactly my point.   Since IBM sells z, Power and intel 
boxen, they don't have to be competetive with themselves,  that could be seen 
as canabilazation.   IBM i is in a similar position in IBM as z/OS customers.  
Most that could easily convert off have done so.  The ones left must pay the 
premium price to continue running.


The cross-industry study conducted by Rubin Worldwide found that businesses with 
mainframes are more efficient and less expensive to operate. 
http://rubinworldwide.com/files/Mainframe_Economics.pdf

Specifically:
o 44% lower cost per credit card transaction
o 31% lower IT spend per consumer loan
o 26% lower cost per new vehicle
o 25% lower cost per mega watt hour produced
o 25% lower cost per retail store
o 24% lower cost per hospital bed
o 23% lower cost per barrel of oil
o 20% lower cost per airline passenger

Exhaustive TCO studies, conducted in actual customer environments, continue to 
show that mainframes are less expensive Enterprise technology to own, operate 
and upgrade that alternative platforms. 
https://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Handout/Session9795/SHARE%20Orlando%2009795.pdf


--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

I agree.  Too few z/OS courses in the universities over the past 20+ years.

Like languages, each platform has it advantages and disadvantages.  People
should use the most appropriate language, platform, etc. for each situation
in order to provide the best solution.

Don

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Scott Ford
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 4:30 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Don,
 
 What's really disconcerting is that the z/OS knowledge base is
 disappearing. JVM isn't the end all in languages. I write a lot of an
 gauges, including C. Yes, I am a big Linux fan
 
 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 
 Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
 I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
 On Jan 30, 2013, at 4:08 PM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  For now, IBM has legacy customers over a barrel and can demand a high
 price
  for the mainframe hardware and operating systems. But for developers
 of new
  apps, they can choose a different platform, esp. if they believe that
 their
  customers will purchase whatever platform it takes to run them. I
 think
  eventually (i.e., over decades) legacy applications will be replaced
 with
  newer slicker apps that don't require IBM's big iron.  Hmm, in the
 decades
  to come, will IBM be able to continue to command a high price for its
 big
  iron?  Will employees who work with big iron continue to be well
 paid?
 
  -Original Message-
  From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-
 m...@listserv.ua.edu]
  On Behalf Of Scott Ford
  Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 3:04 PM
  To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
  Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
  Tony,
 
  Whoever said IBM was price competitive, they are re only game in
 town ,
  as far as big iron goes
 
  Scott ford
  www.identityforge.com
 
  Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
  I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
  On Jan 30, 2013, at 2:09 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote:
 
  On 30 January 2013 13:34, Edward Jaffe
 edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
  wrote:
  On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:
 
  From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software
  development
  activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not
  production
  work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users
 logging
  onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I
  guess
  they could do QA testing.
 
 
  zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the
  same
  technology) is for customers.
 
  http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/
 
  Sure, but for customers to do development and testing only.
  Absolutely
  no production, or even production-like builds. Still no low-end
 zArch
  machines for a small company to run prod on.
 
  Tony H.
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

All,

The point is expensive, big companies with an IT staff, MVS or Z/OS unusually 
means big head count. Coming out of number 5 company who does tobacco, the head 
count and budget were seriously big and weren't even MVS, we were VM. Nowdays, 
I don't know what salaries are like.

 Also you must live in the wrong part of the country I worked in NYC and NJ and 
managed to raise two kids who are now in college , and live without a wife 
working. Unfortunately, the last 8 because she passed in 2004. Btw , I am still 
working not as a Sysprog but a developer , but I also maintain the systems. I 
am very pro mainframe, the problem is if you need a mainframe system and your a 
small business and not a development house, what can you do ? PCs, Unix, been 
there too.
There's no utopia , just what works best for the company and it finances. 

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 30, 2013, at 4:41 PM, Ron Wells ron.we...@slfs.com wrote:

 Big Iron...bad label...
 
 This is why Zseries...z/OS--z/VM--Linux...as for expensive? ...TCO...vs 
 many many many of other platform(s) Lic fees so on..maint.
 as like anything else .. depending on your needs depends on the size of 
 the Hardware you may need...as for the size.. you can always grow when you 
 have to without reinstalling the world..including staffing..
 
 as for M/Fers being well paid..sort ofbut there are not as many of us 
 required at that site for support.
 
 other factors as well...security..DR..
 as for newer slicker apps  again...this all can be performed on the M/F 
 as well..
 and customers are not over a barrel...the alternatives you lead to are 
 there on the Zseries..negative's mention for the mainframe?---Zseries? -- 
 sorry to say is bogus. Too many Companies today see the advantages and are 
 taking them. as for high price you mention..depending on the vendor 
 yes..but there are alternatives even IBM.. 
 Linux being the high points these days has made the Zseries even more of a 
 $$ savings opportunity .
 
 others can add to this list..done pitching...
 
 
 
 
 
 From:   Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Date:   01/30/2013 03:09 PM
 Subject:Re: mainframe selling points
 Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 
 
 
 For now, IBM has legacy customers over a barrel and can demand a high 
 price
 for the mainframe hardware and operating systems. But for developers of 
 new
 apps, they can choose a different platform, esp. if they believe that 
 their
 customers will purchase whatever platform it takes to run them. I think
 eventually (i.e., over decades) legacy applications will be replaced with
 newer slicker apps that don't require IBM's big iron.  Hmm, in the decades
 to come, will IBM be able to continue to command a high price for its big
 iron?  Will employees who work with big iron continue to be well paid?
 
 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Scott Ford
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 3:04 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Tony,
 
 Whoever said IBM was price competitive, they are re only game in town ,
 as far as big iron goes
 
 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 
 Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
 I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
 On Jan 30, 2013, at 2:09 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote:
 
 On 30 January 2013 13:34, Edward Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
 wrote:
 On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:
 
 From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software
 development
 activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not
 production
 work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users logging
 onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I
 guess
 they could do QA testing.
 
 
 zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the
 same
 technology) is for customers.
 
 http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/
 
 Sure, but for customers to do development and testing only.
 Absolutely
 no production, or even production-like builds. Still no low-end zArch
 machines for a small company to run prod on.
 
 Tony H.
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

Smallest M/F with z/OS, z/VM, etc. seems to be too big for a lot of small or
startup developers.  
These developers may have great ideas for slick new apps which could be
developed on the M/F.  The catch is they can't afford the minimum
configuration.
What's their solution?  Probably to develop on a cheaper less robust
platform.  Later, when they have grown, it's not worth it to make a M/F
version.
zPDT may help, but there seems to be a large gap between the largest zPDT
and the smallest System z; therefore the transition between the two may not
be feasible.

Over the years, most management has learned how to find all those hidden
costs, so they can calculate reasonable TCO for both M/F and PC farms.

In salaries surveys, it is clear that M/F staff get paid better that PC
staff.  However, we M/Fers need to be careful about saying fewer of us are
needed for support.  There are companies with a staff 10 or less that
successfully manage farms of many many thousands of PC images.

I think a lot of customers are over a barrel, because they cannot afford the
conversion or the conversion would be too disruptive. Some, not all, vendors
take advantage of that.

Yes, I'm biased for z/OS because my z/OS expertise is much better that my
zLinux skills.

Don


 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Ron Wells
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 4:41 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Big Iron...bad label...
 
 This is why Zseries...z/OS--z/VM--Linux...as for expensive? ...TCO...vs
 many many many of other platform(s) Lic fees so on..maint.
 as like anything else .. depending on your needs depends on the size of
 the Hardware you may need...as for the size.. you can always grow when
 you
 have to without reinstalling the world..including staffing..
 
 as for M/Fers being well paid..sort ofbut there are not as many of
 us
 required at that site for support.
 
 other factors as well...security..DR..
 as for newer slicker apps  again...this all can be performed on the
 M/F
 as well..
 and customers are not over a barrel...the alternatives you lead to are
 there on the Zseries..negative's mention for the mainframe?---Zseries?
 --
 sorry to say is bogus. Too many Companies today see the advantages and
 are
 taking them. as for high price you mention..depending on the vendor
 yes..but there are alternatives even IBM..
 Linux being the high points these days has made the Zseries even more
 of a
 $$ savings opportunity .
 
 others can add to this list..done pitching...
 
 
 
 
 
 From:   Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Date:   01/30/2013 03:09 PM
 Subject:Re: mainframe selling points
 Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-
 m...@listserv.ua.edu
 
 
 
 For now, IBM has legacy customers over a barrel and can demand a high
 price
 for the mainframe hardware and operating systems. But for developers of
 new
 apps, they can choose a different platform, esp. if they believe that
 their
 customers will purchase whatever platform it takes to run them. I think
 eventually (i.e., over decades) legacy applications will be replaced
 with
 newer slicker apps that don't require IBM's big iron.  Hmm, in the
 decades
 to come, will IBM be able to continue to command a high price for its
 big
 iron?  Will employees who work with big iron continue to be well paid?
 
  -Original Message-
  From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
  On Behalf Of Scott Ford
  Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 3:04 PM
  To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
  Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
  Tony,
 
  Whoever said IBM was price competitive, they are re only game in town
 ,
  as far as big iron goes
 
  Scott ford
  www.identityforge.com
 
  Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
  I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
  On Jan 30, 2013, at 2:09 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote:
 
   On 30 January 2013 13:34, Edward Jaffe
 edja...@phoenixsoftware.com
  wrote:
   On 1/30/2013 10:30 AM, John McKown wrote:
  
   From what I remember, zPDT can only be used for software
  development
   activities. Yes, you can run CICS and DB2 on it. But not
  production
   work. I.e. you can't have your company's general end-users
 logging
   onto CICS and doing production work which runs the business. I
  guess
   they could do QA testing.
  
  
   zPDT is for software developers only. RDT (based on exactly the
  same
   technology) is for customers.
  
   http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/devtest/systemz/
  
   Sure, but for customers to do development and testing only.
  Absolutely
   no production, or even production-like builds. Still no low-end
 zArch
   machines for a small company to run prod on.
  
   Tony H.
  
   ---
 --
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   For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff

Re: mainframe selling points

Could a small shop with a z114 (2818-A01) expect to get roughly the same 
percent savings as large shop with 3 or 4 zEC12s (2827-7A1)?
The Share presentation seemed to based on large customers.

Don

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Edward Jaffe
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 5:14 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 On 1/30/2013 1:32 PM, Dana Mitchell wrote:
  Thanks Tony! thats exactly my point.   Since IBM sells z, Power and
 intel boxen, they don't have to be competetive with themselves,  that
 could be seen as canabilazation.   IBM i is in a similar position in
 IBM as z/OS customers.  Most that could easily convert off have done
 so.  The ones left must pay the premium price to continue running.
 
 The cross-industry study conducted by Rubin Worldwide found that
 businesses with
 mainframes are more efficient and less expensive to operate.
 http://rubinworldwide.com/files/Mainframe_Economics.pdf
 Specifically:
 o 44% lower cost per credit card transaction
 o 31% lower IT spend per consumer loan
 o 26% lower cost per new vehicle
 o 25% lower cost per mega watt hour produced
 o 25% lower cost per retail store
 o 24% lower cost per hospital bed
 o 23% lower cost per barrel of oil
 o 20% lower cost per airline passenger
 
 Exhaustive TCO studies, conducted in actual customer environments,
 continue to
 show that mainframes are less expensive Enterprise technology to own,
 operate
 and upgrade that alternative platforms.
 https://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Handout/Session9795/SHARE
 %20Orlando%2009795.pdf
 
 --
 Edward E Jaffe
 Phoenix Software International, Inc
 831 Parkview Drive North
 El Segundo, CA 90245
 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/
 
 --
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Re: mainframe selling points

My Father told me to always select the right tool for the job. It is so
common sense, but he told me anyway. 
I'd be embarrassed to say how many times in my life I failed to do that. 
However, when I look around, there is no shortage of people trying to use
the wrong tool. 
But you are quite right, different people will choose a different right
tool.


 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of John Gilmore
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 6:54 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Don Williams wrote:
 
 begin excerpt
 Like languages, each platform has it advantages and disadvantages.
 People
 should use the most appropriate language, platform, etc. for each
 situation
 in order to provide the best solution.
 end excerpt
 
 I agree.  How not?  It is an  innocuous, statesman-like straddle that
 it would be hard and pointless to disagree with.
 
 The rub comes when specific metrics must be chosen.  How is
 appropriateness to be measured?  By whom?  In what time frame?
 
 John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread John McKown

I guess that I don't like .NET for two main reasons. The first is that, as
an FSF member, I really don't care for proprietary software 5hat the vendor
owns and can change at their whim. A personal thing. Another was some bad
experiences at work with some early versions which were used to interface
with z/OS. There were problems but I had to PROVE that they were not on
z/OS before they would even consider looking at their code because .NET
code is never a problem! That left a very bad taste in my mouth because
management believed everything they said, implying that I was ignorant or a
liar. A management problem, not a technical one.
On Jan 30, 2013 6:31 PM, Andrew Rowley and...@blackhillsoftware.com
wrote:

 On 30/01/2013 3:42, John McKown wrote:

  We don't have the money to convert from CICS or batch COBOL to something
 else (likely Microsoft .NET based shudder/).


 I am curious why you single out .NET specifically here? I develop in .NET,
 and I think it is quite good, with some very powerful features.

 On the wider topic, the move away from desktop to web is a major plus for
 z/OS - it removes one of the big drivers for migration. The end user
 (ideally) can't tell the difference between a web interface deliverd by
 z/OS or Windows or Linux.

 z/OS is arguably in a more secure long term position than Windows because
 of the move away from desktop. Windows growth has been based on a copy on
 every desktop, which is looking shaky now. I'm more confident that z/OS
 will be recognizable in 20 years than Windows.

 The languages and development environments are one of the critical
 factors. RDz seems to be a solution for the IDE (although I wonder what
 percentage of sites use it) but the features available in the languages are
 probably more important. Things like generics and powerful collections
 (hashtables, dynamic lists/vectors, sets etc.) make development far more
 productive, and the programs more efficient. It's a long time since I did
 any real z/OS application development, so perhaps these facilities are
 available in the common z/OS languages now. If not, asking someone who has
 used them to program without them is like asking a builder to build a house
 without using power tools.

 The best approach for z/OS shops is probably to steer new development
 towards Java. This gives programmers a relatively familiar and productive
 environment to work in, and should drive down development costs.
 Unfortunately, I think many z/OS sites are resistant to Java.

 In reality, selling points are not important, until you remove the factors
 that result in z/OS being crossed off the list. If you can't do that, no
 amount of selling points will help.

 Andrew Rowley

 --
 and...@blackhillsoftware.com
 +61 413 302 386

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Ted MacNEIL

My favourite tool quote:

Information Technology consists mainly finding the correct wrench to drive in 
the appropriate screw.

If you don't get it I won't explain it.
-
Ted MacNEIL
eamacn...@yahoo.ca
Twitter: @TedMacNEIL

-Original Message-
From: Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
Sender:   IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:59:18 
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Reply-To: IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

My Father told me to always select the right tool for the job. It is so
common sense, but he told me anyway. 
I'd be embarrassed to say how many times in my life I failed to do that. 
However, when I look around, there is no shortage of people trying to use
the wrong tool. 
But you are quite right, different people will choose a different right
tool.


 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of John Gilmore
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 6:54 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Don Williams wrote:
 
 begin excerpt
 Like languages, each platform has it advantages and disadvantages.
 People
 should use the most appropriate language, platform, etc. for each
 situation
 in order to provide the best solution.
 end excerpt
 
 I agree.  How not?  It is an  innocuous, statesman-like straddle that
 it would be hard and pointless to disagree with.
 
 The rub comes when specific metrics must be chosen.  How is
 appropriateness to be measured?  By whom?  In what time frame?
 
 John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
 
 --
 For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Tony's new office PC via Mozilla

Explanation may be necessary.  All these years I've used the correct 
wrench to   pound   in the appropriate screw.   ;-)






On 1/30/2013 8:28 PM, Ted MacNEIL wrote:

My favourite tool quote:

Information Technology consists mainly finding the correct wrench to drive in 
the appropriate screw.

If you don't get it I won't explain it.
-
Ted MacNEIL
eamacn...@yahoo.ca
Twitter: @TedMacNEIL

-Original Message-
From: Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
Sender:   IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:59:18
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Reply-To: IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

My Father told me to always select the right tool for the job. It is so
common sense, but he told me anyway.
I'd be embarrassed to say how many times in my life I failed to do that.
However, when I look around, there is no shortage of people trying to use
the wrong tool.
But you are quite right, different people will choose a different right
tool.



-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
On Behalf Of John Gilmore
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 6:54 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

Don Williams wrote:

begin excerpt
Like languages, each platform has it advantages and disadvantages.
People
should use the most appropriate language, platform, etc. for each
situation
in order to provide the best solution.
end excerpt

I agree.  How not?  It is an  innocuous, statesman-like straddle that
it would be hard and pointless to disagree with.

The rub comes when specific metrics must be chosen.  How is
appropriateness to be measured?  By whom?  In what time frame?

John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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Re: mainframe selling points

Don,

Exactly...factoring in skillsets and money...

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 30, 2013, at 8:59 PM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:

 My Father told me to always select the right tool for the job. It is so
 common sense, but he told me anyway. 
 I'd be embarrassed to say how many times in my life I failed to do that. 
 However, when I look around, there is no shortage of people trying to use
 the wrong tool. 
 But you are quite right, different people will choose a different right
 tool.
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of John Gilmore
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 6:54 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Don Williams wrote:
 
 begin excerpt
 Like languages, each platform has it advantages and disadvantages.
 People
 should use the most appropriate language, platform, etc. for each
 situation
 in order to provide the best solution.
 end excerpt
 
 I agree.  How not?  It is an  innocuous, statesman-like straddle that
 it would be hard and pointless to disagree with.
 
 The rub comes when specific metrics must be chosen.  How is
 appropriateness to be measured?  By whom?  In what time frame?
 
 John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
 
 --
 For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
 send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
 
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 For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
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Re: mainframe selling points

Don,

Hear this many a time from my father also, while I was under a car working

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 30, 2013, at 8:59 PM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:

 My Father told me to always select the right tool for the job. It is so
 common sense, but he told me anyway. 
 I'd be embarrassed to say how many times in my life I failed to do that. 
 However, when I look around, there is no shortage of people trying to use
 the wrong tool. 
 But you are quite right, different people will choose a different right
 tool.
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of John Gilmore
 Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 6:54 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Don Williams wrote:
 
 begin excerpt
 Like languages, each platform has it advantages and disadvantages.
 People
 should use the most appropriate language, platform, etc. for each
 situation
 in order to provide the best solution.
 end excerpt
 
 I agree.  How not?  It is an  innocuous, statesman-like straddle that
 it would be hard and pointless to disagree with.
 
 The rub comes when specific metrics must be chosen.  How is
 appropriateness to be measured?  By whom?  In what time frame?
 
 John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Itschak Mugzach

I don't think that the writer of the document (Dr. Rubin) compares apples
to apples. IBM mainframe does not operate the network (DNS, DHCP, AD, email
servers and many other base services). there are some tens of servers that
has no comparable service in the mainframe world. The mainframe, from this
point of view, is just another server, and the comparison should compare
mainframe applications vs alternatives (re-hosting, rewrite), or the other
hand - moving a server application into the mainframe.
There are many questions to be asked about IBM marketing strategy, most has
been asked in this thread. Have you even thought why does Cobol program
runs much faster on wintel then a mainframe? Why is sorting much efficient
on wintel?
I am sure most CEOs knows what their spending is, and where the budgert
goes. And at end, if they could begin from scratch, i am sure most of them
wouldn't select mainframe as their platform of computing. would you?

ITschak

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 12:14 AM, Edward Jaffe
edja...@phoenixsoftware.comwrote:

On 1/30/2013 1:32 PM, Dana Mitchell wrote:

Thanks Tony! thats exactly my point. Since IBM sells z, Power and intel
boxen, they don't have to be competetive with themselves, that could be
seen as canabilazation. IBM i is in a similar position in IBM as z/OS
customers. Most that could easily convert off have done so. The ones left
must pay the premium price to continue running.

The cross-industry study conducted by Rubin Worldwide found that
businesses with mainframes are more efficient and less expensive to
operate.
http://rubinworldwide.com/**files/Mainframe_Economics.pdfhttp://rubinworldwide.com/files/Mainframe_Economics.pdf
Specifically:
o 44% lower cost per credit card transaction
o 31% lower IT spend per consumer loan
o 26% lower cost per new vehicle
o 25% lower cost per mega watt hour produced
o 25% lower cost per retail store
o 24% lower cost per hospital bed
o 23% lower cost per barrel of oil
o 20% lower cost per airline passenger

Exhaustive TCO studies, conducted in actual customer environments,
continue to show that mainframes are less expensive Enterprise technology
to own, operate and upgrade that alternative platforms.
https://share.confex.com/**share/117/webprogram/Handout/**
Session9795/SHARE%20Orlando%**2009795.pdfhttps://share.confex.com/share/117/webprogram/Handout/Session9795/SHARE%20Orlando%2009795.pdf

--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.**com/ http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Ted MacNEIL

IBM mainframe does not operate the network (DNS, DHCP, AD, email servers and 
many other base services)

Oh, yes it does!
WebSphere, Lotus Notes, DNS were all there in 1999!
-
Ted MacNEIL
eamacn...@yahoo.ca
Twitter: @TedMacNEIL

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Itschak Mugzach

So why don't you save the money and run your corporate network from the
mainframe ;-)


On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 7:18 AM, Ted MacNEIL eamacn...@yahoo.ca wrote:

 IBM mainframe does not operate the network (DNS, DHCP, AD, email servers
 and many other base services)

 Oh, yes it does!
 WebSphere, Lotus Notes, DNS were all there in 1999!
 -
 Ted MacNEIL
 eamacn...@yahoo.ca
 Twitter: @TedMacNEIL

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-30 Thread Timothy Sipples

A couple points (and not new ones, but I guess they need repeating):

https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/stg_com_agr_zos

That's a real zEnterprise machine located in Dallas, as it happens. Free is
a rather good price!

Here's some more information:

https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/isv_com_tsp_iic_resources_systemz_remote_offerings

As an aside, software vendors sometimes cannot replicate
customer-experienced bugs no matter what resources they have internally or
externally. That's a common problem on other platforms and, in my
experience, substantially less common (though not unknown) on IBM
mainframes. At least with IBM mainframes there's an incredibly rich set of
diagnostic facilities for problem determination and fault analysis, even in
the base z/OS operating system and zEnterprise hardware products.

2. You're *already* developing for mainframes if you selected among several
popular application hosting environments. Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) is
one notable example among several. In fact, lately (with IBM's WebSphere
Liberty Profile) you don't even need to add a JEE runtime to z/OS to run
JEE applications. You just add the application itself, and if you're
licensed for base z/OS you already have what you need on z/OS. If you've
tried the WebSphere Liberty Profile you know what I mean, and if you
haven't you should.

I think this reality is a major part of the story that an awful lot of
forum participants have missed or don't fully appreciate. Almost nobody
develops on the same machine to which they deploy -- anybody heard of the
Internet? -- and most developers are developing in ways entirely consistent
with deployment to zEnterprise machines. IBM has brought the mountain to
(you know who) and continues to do that as application hosting
environments evolve while also preserving, enhancing, and extending
existing application environments. It has always been so, actually.

So whether you're a JEE, JRuby/Ruby, Jython/Python, LAMP, Mono, MUMPS/M,
or... whatever you develop with, chances are excellent you're already
developing for zEnterprise (z/OS and/or Linux on z). And if you want to
validate that reality for your particular application, is free OK? I hope
so.

Timothy Sipples
Consulting Enterprise IT Architect (Based in Singapore)
E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Phil Smith

Ted MacNEIL wrote:
IBM blew it 20-30 years ago when they stopped being generous to colleges and 
universities. Looking at the short term.

You are SO right!
Shortly after I graduated from Waterloo, IBM stopped that programme; shortly 
after that the University of Waterloo dropped COBOL as a requirement for co-op 
students.
Bingo! Bango! Bongo! The financial sector (Ontario  Toronto, at least) went 
elsewhere for co-op, or stopped their programmes, completely.
Now, University of Waterloo computer graduates are PC weinies, web-masters, 
and gamers.
University of Waterloo's defence?
We are here to teach. Not to prepare future employees.
BS! I went to Waterloo to become employable with the best credentials 
available in the 1970's  80's.
Sorry for the topic drift, but I do think it all stemmed from IBM dropping 
their generosity.

While I agree 100% with the overall sentiment, in UofW's case, it didn't help 
that they hired a new Provost in the mid-80s who hated IBM. HESC wasn't gone 
yet, but his arrival turned the corner on IBM's presence at that school.
--
...phsiii


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Re: mainframe selling points

In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to work with
IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase out their
mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based servers.  For
various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look for a new
Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on the z/OS
platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who chose to
develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that successful
vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not chosing z/OS,
why not?  

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Timothy Sipples
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 1:01 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

Don Williams asks:
I wonder what percent were using z/OS?

I think you're asking what percentage of new mainframe customers run z/OS.
IBM doesn't say as far as I know, but it's over half (greater than 50%)
according to what I've read elsewhere. That's in agreement with my
anecdotal experience.

With respect to the application discussion, I generally agree.
Fundamentally IBM is keeping pace or even leading in providing all popular
(and even not-so-popular) application hosting environments on zEnterprise,
and that's important. (Java is an example where IBM was/is ahead of the
curve.) Also, if there's an application that isn't yet on zEnterprise that
you'd like to see on zEnterprise, ask the vendor, and ask the vendor to
work with IBM. IBM has been increasing its application developer support
resources recently, and there's a steady stream of new applications
announced every month, every quarter, every year.



Timothy Sipples
Consulting Enterprise IT Architect (Based in Singapore)
E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Ron Wells

and what about Linux -- on the Z platform

From:   Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Date:   01/29/2013 10:19 AM
Subject:Re: mainframe selling points
Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to work with
IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase out their
mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based servers.  For
various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look for a new
Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on the z/OS
platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who chose to
develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that successful
vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not chosing z/OS,
why not? 

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Timothy Sipples
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 1:01 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

Don Williams asks:
I wonder what percent were using z/OS?

I think you're asking what percentage of new mainframe customers run z/OS.
IBM doesn't say as far as I know, but it's over half (greater than 50%)
according to what I've read elsewhere. That's in agreement with my
anecdotal experience.

With respect to the application discussion, I generally agree.
Fundamentally IBM is keeping pace or even leading in providing all popular
(and even not-so-popular) application hosting environments on zEnterprise,
and that's important. (Java is an example where IBM was/is ahead of the
curve.) Also, if there's an application that isn't yet on zEnterprise that
you'd like to see on zEnterprise, ask the vendor, and ask the vendor to
work with IBM. IBM has been increasing its application developer support
resources recently, and there's a steady stream of new applications
announced every month, every quarter, every year.

Timothy Sipples
Consulting Enterprise IT Architect (Based in Singapore)
E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread John McKown

I am not sure, but the PC in impinging on the z in many ways. IMO, one
reason is that some very creative people can afford their own PC and
tools (especially if they use Linux). The investment is very low
compared to a z. And the vendor can then market the product to many
more people. Most every office in the world has PC class servers. Take
the EMR package. If it is priced correctly and easy to use, then the
market into local doctor's offices is immense compared to, say, only
into a major hospital (which could possibly afford a z). I know my
personal doctor has some sort of PC based software. I see them (and my
dentist) using it. And the doctor no longer writes physical
prescriptions. He just enters it into his laptop; it then ends up
going to my pharmacy; and they send a text to my phone when it is
ready to pick up. I really don't see much of any reason for
application level code on the z any more. Things like DB2, maybe.
But CICS? Sorry, it is simply easier to create a web based
transaction using WAS or JBOSS or Tomcat on a server. Doing so is more
cost efficient for our size (and shrinking) business. The only reason
we continue with CICS/COBOL is that we do incremental changes. We
don't have the money to convert from CICS or batch COBOL to something
else (likely Microsoft .NET based shudder/).


On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:
 In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to work with
 IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase out their
 mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based servers.  For
 various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look for a new
 Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
 understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on the z/OS
 platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who chose to
 develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that successful
 vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not chosing z/OS,
 why not?

-- 
Maranatha! 
John McKown

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Scott Ford

All,

I have read over the posts and I agree with most of you. But there seems to be 
another factor.
Maybe it's always been there and I simply accepted it in my 'younger' days, the 
lazy factor.
I see it on here also, 'do my research for me', 'do my job for me' , everyone I 
know on the mainframe side of IT pretty much earned their stripes working a lot 
of hours and researching etc.
This includes me. I will be the first to help you, but at least RTFM. A z/OS 
system is not a PC.

Another observation , the z/OS skillset is disappearing. The ability to think 
clear and organized and understand what is needed for the situation. 


Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 29, 2013, at 11:21 AM, Ron Wells ron.we...@slfs.com wrote:

 and what about Linux -- on the Z platform
 
 
 
 From:   Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Date:   01/29/2013 10:19 AM
 Subject:Re: mainframe selling points
 Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 
 
 
 In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to work with
 IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase out their
 mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based servers.  For
 various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look for a new
 Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
 understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on the z/OS
 platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who chose to
 develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that successful
 vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not chosing z/OS,
 why not? 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
 Behalf Of Timothy Sipples
 Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 1:01 AM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Don Williams asks:
 I wonder what percent were using z/OS?
 
 I think you're asking what percentage of new mainframe customers run z/OS.
 IBM doesn't say as far as I know, but it's over half (greater than 50%)
 according to what I've read elsewhere. That's in agreement with my
 anecdotal experience.
 
 With respect to the application discussion, I generally agree.
 Fundamentally IBM is keeping pace or even leading in providing all popular
 (and even not-so-popular) application hosting environments on zEnterprise,
 and that's important. (Java is an example where IBM was/is ahead of the
 curve.) Also, if there's an application that isn't yet on zEnterprise that
 you'd like to see on zEnterprise, ask the vendor, and ask the vendor to
 work with IBM. IBM has been increasing its application developer support
 resources recently, and there's a steady stream of new applications
 announced every month, every quarter, every year.
 
 
 
 Timothy Sipples
 Consulting Enterprise IT Architect (Based in Singapore)
 E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com
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 only  for  the use of the individual or entity addressed above.  If you are 
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Re: mainframe selling points

Hi Steve,

Thanks for great reply.  More below...

Don

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Steve Comstock
 Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 11:36 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 On 1/28/2013 7:22 PM, Don Williams wrote:
snip

 I work for a large hospital that has recently selected a new Electronic
 Medical Records (EMR) vendor.  While their decision process considered
the
 infrastructure, the weight of all the other factors effectively ignored
any
 platform advantages/disadvantages.  They were far more concerned about
 whether the application best meets the needs of the doctors, nurses,
 clinics, etc. than whether the hardware be the best available.
 
 Are you saying it's wrong to meet the needs of the customers first?
 If I ran a hospital of course I would choose applications that helped
 my staff most, and I would not care about the platform - just as long
 as the applications worked correctly and were available when needed.
 
I agree, the staff needs far out weight the choice of platform.  
What I omitted, was there was no viable EMR software based on z/OS. 

 
 A former colleague brought it to my attention that many hospitals have
started
 switching to the same EMR vendor away from mainframe based applications,
and
 that I should have my resume at the ready.  After talking to other former
 colleagues, I discovered that the hospital industry is not the only
industry
 trying to move to slicker, nicer applications even if they have to switch
to
 another platform.  This implies that the software vendor is indirectly
 selecting the platform.
 
 Yes, and that's the way it should be.
 

My real questions are -- Why no EMR vendor chose the z/OS platform?
And are vendors in other industries starting to avoid z/OS?  If so, why?


 While my analysis is based on antidotal evidence, I believe that the
young
   ITYM anecdotal; antidotal might keep
   you from dying due to poisoning
 

Thanks for catching my wrong word.  It did not look quite right, but I was
too lazy to double check it.
(or was I subconsciously looking for an antidote for the current state of
affairs? :-)

 
 new developers of these slicker, newer applications want to develop on a
 familiar platform  (i.e., their school did not use a mainframe).
 
 IBM blew it 20-30 years ago when they stopped being generous
 to colleges and universities. Looking at the short term.

Boy do I agree. IIRC, the university I attended got a 60% to 70% (maybe
more) discount for their s/360 Mod 50. 
I expect the various antitrust suits against IBM, esp. one in 1969 forced
IBM to reduce/eliminate their generosity. 

 
 They want to choose a platform that minimizes their development cost
(again not
 a  mainframe), yet is sufficient for a production environment.
Historically, 
 PC, blade servers, etc. simply were not robust enough to handle medium to
 large companies.  PC/blades/etc. have become larger and clustered, etc.,
so
 that now days they can handle a large company (this does not apply to the
 Fortune 1000 variety, because they are beyond large).  Therefore vendors
 seem far more willing to develop for a non-mainframe environment.  IBM
seems
 to have extended the mainframe with specialty processors like the IFL
 processors for zLinux support, and Ensembles for blade support as a hedge
 against the other platforms.

 I'm not saying that IBM's mainframe market is about to dry up and 
disappear.
 The Fortune 1000 size companies alone will keep the mainframe market
healthy
 for many years to come, but I do think the other platforms are beginning
to
 make a serious dent in the lower side of the traditional mainframe
market.
 
 Where have you been? Of course that's what's been happening for
 10 years or so. And IBM, generally speaking, is indifferent to
 the trend as long as they get their share of the non-mainframe
 market. Pay me for mainframes or pay for AIX, same results.
 

I'm not sure I agree with Pay me for mainframes or pay for AIX, same
results.
Which platform provides IBM the best profit margin?
Hardware-wise, I would guess the System z.
Operating System-wise, I would guess z/OS.
Therefore I would expect IBM to promote vendor and education activities that
would enhance those lines of business.


 

 Don

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On
 Behalf Of Ron Wells
 Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 8:47 AM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

 someone--needs to tell BBC about false statements.





 From:   Mike Schwab mike.a.sch...@gmail.com
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Date:   01/25/2013 05:47 PM
 Subject:Re: mainframe selling points
 Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-
 m...@listserv.ua.edu



 Card reader / punch, lineprinter, reel tapes, unmounted 3330 disk
 pack.

 Things have sure

Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler

st...@trainersfriend.com (Steve Comstock) writes:
 IBM blew it 20-30 years ago when they stopped being generous
 to colleges and universities. Looking at the short term.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#74 mainframe selling points
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#75 mainframe selling points

20yrs ago IBM had gone into the red (significantly accelerated by
stranglehold that the communication group had on datacenters). corporate
executives had been preping the company for breakup ... recent
references to old time article baby blues ... restructuring as part of
preperation for breackup
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#61 What is holding back cloud adoption?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#63 Today in TIME Tech History: 
Piston-less Power (1959), IBM's Decline (1992), TiVo (1998) and More

the board then brings in Gerstner to resurrect the company and for a
complete make over ... other recent posts mentioning Gerstner
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#34 Co-existance of z/OS and z/VM on same 
DASD farm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#72 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#74 Why So Many Formerly Successful 
Companies Are Failing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#82 How do you feel about the fact that 
today India has more IBM employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#87 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#4 Think You Know The Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#12 How do you feel about the fact that 
today India has more IBM employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#16 Hierarchy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#17 Hierarchy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#35 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#54 How will mainframers retiring be 
different from Y2K?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#55 The Invention of Email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#65 What are your experiences with Amdahl 
Computers and Plug-Compatibles?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#16 Think You Know The Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#25 Can anybody give me a clear idea 
about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#69 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#9 Sandy Weill's About-Face on Big Banks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#15 Microsoft's Downfall: Inside the 
Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#19 SnOODAn: Boyd, Snowden, and Resilience
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#21 Is there a connection between your 
strategic and tactical assertions?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#31 History--punched card transmission 
over telegraph lines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#34 History--punched card transmission 
over telegraph lines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#46 Slackware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#49 1132 printer history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#65 How do you feel about the fact that 
India has more employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#70 END OF FILE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#75 What's the bigger risk, retiring too 
soon, or too late?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#20 X86 server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#27 PDP-10 system calls, was 1132 printer 
history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#63 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#69 Cultural attitudes towards failure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#24 Does the IBM System z Mainframe rely 
on Security by Obscurity or is it Secure by Design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#58 General Mills computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#1 STOP PRESS! An Auditor has been 
brought to task for a failed bank!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#8 General Mills computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#20 General Mills computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#14 OT: Tax breaks to Oracle debated
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#32 Does the IBM System z Mainframe rely 
on Obscurity or is it Security by Design?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#60 Today in TIME Tech History: 
Piston-less Power (1959), IBM's Decline (1992), TiVo (1998) and More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#61 What is holding back cloud adoption?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#64 IBM Is Changing The Terms Of Its 
Retirement Plan, Which Is Frustrating Some Employees

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Steve Comstock


On 1/29/2013 10:40 AM, Don Williams wrote:

Hi Steve,

Thanks for great reply.  More below...

Don


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Steve Comstock
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 11:36 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

On 1/28/2013 7:22 PM, Don Williams wrote:

snip


I work for a large hospital that has recently selected a new Electronic
Medical Records (EMR) vendor.  While their decision process considered

the

infrastructure, the weight of all the other factors effectively ignored

any

platform advantages/disadvantages.  They were far more concerned about
whether the application best meets the needs of the doctors, nurses,
clinics, etc. than whether the hardware be the best available.


Are you saying it's wrong to meet the needs of the customers first?
If I ran a hospital of course I would choose applications that helped
my staff most, and I would not care about the platform - just as long
as the applications worked correctly and were available when needed.


I agree, the staff needs far out weight the choice of platform.
What I omitted, was there was no viable EMR software based on z/OS.




A former colleague brought it to my attention that many hospitals have

started

switching to the same EMR vendor away from mainframe based applications,

and

that I should have my resume at the ready.  After talking to other former
colleagues, I discovered that the hospital industry is not the only

industry

trying to move to slicker, nicer applications even if they have to switch

to

another platform.  This implies that the software vendor is indirectly
selecting the platform.


Yes, and that's the way it should be.



My real questions are -- Why no EMR vendor chose the z/OS platform?
And are vendors in other industries starting to avoid z/OS?  If so, why?



While my analysis is based on antidotal evidence, I believe that the

young

   ITYM anecdotal; antidotal might keep
   you from dying due to poisoning



Thanks for catching my wrong word.  It did not look quite right, but I was
too lazy to double check it.
(or was I subconsciously looking for an antidote for the current state of
affairs? :-)




new developers of these slicker, newer applications want to develop on a
familiar platform  (i.e., their school did not use a mainframe).


IBM blew it 20-30 years ago when they stopped being generous
to colleges and universities. Looking at the short term.


Boy do I agree. IIRC, the university I attended got a 60% to 70% (maybe
more) discount for their s/360 Mod 50.
I expect the various antitrust suits against IBM, esp. one in 1969 forced
IBM to reduce/eliminate their generosity.




They want to choose a platform that minimizes their development cost

(again not

a  mainframe), yet is sufficient for a production environment.

Historically,

PC, blade servers, etc. simply were not robust enough to handle medium to
large companies.  PC/blades/etc. have become larger and clustered, etc.,

so

that now days they can handle a large company (this does not apply to the
Fortune 1000 variety, because they are beyond large).  Therefore vendors
seem far more willing to develop for a non-mainframe environment.  IBM

seems

to have extended the mainframe with specialty processors like the IFL
processors for zLinux support, and Ensembles for blade support as a hedge
against the other platforms.

I'm not saying that IBM's mainframe market is about to dry up and 

disappear.

The Fortune 1000 size companies alone will keep the mainframe market

healthy

for many years to come, but I do think the other platforms are beginning

to

make a serious dent in the lower side of the traditional mainframe

market.


Where have you been? Of course that's what's been happening for
10 years or so. And IBM, generally speaking, is indifferent to
the trend as long as they get their share of the non-mainframe
market. Pay me for mainframes or pay for AIX, same results.



I'm not sure I agree with Pay me for mainframes or pay for AIX, same
results.
Which platform provides IBM the best profit margin?
Hardware-wise, I would guess the System z.
Operating System-wise, I would guess z/OS.


Yes. But perhaps they are thinking better to get a
little margin than no margin. Hmmm. That may be a
little weak.



Therefore I would expect IBM to promote vendor and education activities that
would enhance those lines of business.


I'm not sure high level management in IBM really gets it wrt z/OS.









Don

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]

On

Behalf Of Ron Wells
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 8:47 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

someone--needs to tell BBC about false statements.





From:   Mike Schwab mike.a.sch...@gmail.com
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Date:   01/25/2013 05:47 PM
Subject

Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Phil Smith

Ted MacNEIL wrote:
 The University of Waterloo dropped COBOL as a co-op requirement around that 
 time, and the 3033's went out in the earlier part of the decade. I graduated 
 in '81.

Ah, right. You're talking the academic side. I worked in Systems at UofW 
1980-1986, and the IBM systems were going strong in that world when I left. 
Through no prescience or smarts or even remote inklings - rather, just simple 
DUMB LUCK - I believe I left at the peak of mainframes (mostly VM/SP!) at UofW. 
It was the next year that the new Provost came in, and within a few years, VM 
was gone; now even the Red Room is a memory.

When I dabbled in CS in the early 80s, they were indeed not using VM much. 
There was a bit; I remember a friend taking an operating systems course that 
used VM, leaving a userid idle that turned out to be in a loop, spending 
$8,000 in funny money overnight. That was entertaining. And we certainly spent 
a lot of effort in those years developing and maintaining Student CMS (a fully 
padded cell environment).

But the classes I remember were mostly things like Commodore SuperPET 
assembler, about which the TAs knew squat. I'd been writing 370 assembler for 
several years, and they didn't understand things like putting labels on EQU * 
(there was no DS 0H equivalent) *and marked me off for it*. Not that I'm bitter 
or anything (or veering off-topic!).

Ah, the good old days...

...phsiii

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Re: mainframe selling points

Hi John,

System z is not cheap (does it start around $1M?).  I expect the traditional
mainframe operating systems, like z/OS, z/VM, etc., to have a significant
price tag.  I'm not sure what the pricing is for the zLinux variety of
operating system. Free does not get you business class support.  Add to that
the environment, DASD, etc., it's hard for the startup vendor to put all
that in his garage :-)

It seems like they are trying to prevent the creation of smaller more
affordable mainframes.  What happened to P/390, FLEX-ES?  Is there any way
to legally run z/OS on Hercules?  If a small vendor needs coupling
facilities, I think he is out of luck.

Don

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of John McKown
 Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:42 AM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 I am not sure, but the PC in impinging on the z in many ways. IMO, one
 reason is that some very creative people can afford their own PC and
 tools (especially if they use Linux). The investment is very low
 compared to a z. And the vendor can then market the product to many
 more people. Most every office in the world has PC class servers. Take
 the EMR package. If it is priced correctly and easy to use, then the
 market into local doctor's offices is immense compared to, say, only
 into a major hospital (which could possibly afford a z). I know my
 personal doctor has some sort of PC based software. I see them (and my
 dentist) using it. And the doctor no longer writes physical
 prescriptions. He just enters it into his laptop; it then ends up
 going to my pharmacy; and they send a text to my phone when it is
 ready to pick up. I really don't see much of any reason for
 application level code on the z any more. Things like DB2, maybe.
 But CICS? Sorry, it is simply easier to create a web based
 transaction using WAS or JBOSS or Tomcat on a server. Doing so is more
 cost efficient for our size (and shrinking) business. The only reason
 we continue with CICS/COBOL is that we do incremental changes. We
 don't have the money to convert from CICS or batch COBOL to something
 else (likely Microsoft .NET based shudder/).
 
 
 On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to work
 with
  IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase out
 their
  mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based servers.
 For
  various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look for
 a new
  Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
  understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on the
 z/OS
  platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who chose to
  develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that successful
  vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not chosing
 z/OS,
  why not?
 
 --
 Maranatha! 
 John McKown
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Edward Jaffe


On 1/29/2013 11:39 AM, Don Williams wrote:

System z is not cheap (does it start around $1M?).


OMG. I hope not! According to http://tech-news.com/publib/, a z114 2818-A01 
lists for around $75K. I suspect in practice you can get them for far less, 
especially at the end of a quarter.


--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Ed Finnell

You want software with that 'turkey'?
 
 
In a message dated 1/29/2013 2:40:40 P.M. Central Standard Time,  
edja...@phoenixsoftware.com writes:

especially at the end of a  quarter

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Re: mainframe selling points

Good. I was skimming somewhere and I though I saw an small EC12 listed near
a $1M. Of course, that a good bit bigger than an small z114.

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Edward Jaffe
 Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 3:40 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

 On 1/29/2013 11:39 AM, Don Williams wrote:
  System z is not cheap (does it start around $1M?).

 OMG. I hope not! According to http://tech-news.com/publib/, a z114
 2818-A01
 lists for around $75K. I suspect in practice you can get them for far
 less,
 especially at the end of a quarter.

 --
 Edward E Jaffe
 Phoenix Software International, Inc
 831 Parkview Drive North
 El Segundo, CA 90245
 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

 --
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Re: mainframe selling points

Don't forget the Plus SH

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Ed Finnell
 Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 4:25 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 You want software with that 'turkey'?
 
 
 In a message dated 1/29/2013 2:40:40 P.M. Central Standard Time,
 edja...@phoenixsoftware.com writes:
 
 especially at the end of a  quarter
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Edward Jaffe


On 1/29/2013 1:51 PM, Don Williams wrote:

Good. I was skimming somewhere and I though I saw an small EC12 listed near
a $1M. Of course, that a good bit bigger than an small z114.


Right. Smallish shops like ours are hoping/praying for a zBC12(?) model to 
arrive some time this year. Even the smallest zEC12 is too large.


--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Scott Ford

Don,

Dude a lot of vendors, like ourselves run Z/Pdt

Scott ford
www.identityforge.com

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll 
understand. - Chinese Proverb


On Jan 29, 2013, at 2:39 PM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi John,
 
 System z is not cheap (does it start around $1M?).  I expect the traditional
 mainframe operating systems, like z/OS, z/VM, etc., to have a significant
 price tag.  I'm not sure what the pricing is for the zLinux variety of
 operating system. Free does not get you business class support.  Add to that
 the environment, DASD, etc., it's hard for the startup vendor to put all
 that in his garage :-)
 
 It seems like they are trying to prevent the creation of smaller more
 affordable mainframes.  What happened to P/390, FLEX-ES?  Is there any way
 to legally run z/OS on Hercules?  If a small vendor needs coupling
 facilities, I think he is out of luck.
 
 Don
 
 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of John McKown
 Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:42 AM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 I am not sure, but the PC in impinging on the z in many ways. IMO, one
 reason is that some very creative people can afford their own PC and
 tools (especially if they use Linux). The investment is very low
 compared to a z. And the vendor can then market the product to many
 more people. Most every office in the world has PC class servers. Take
 the EMR package. If it is priced correctly and easy to use, then the
 market into local doctor's offices is immense compared to, say, only
 into a major hospital (which could possibly afford a z). I know my
 personal doctor has some sort of PC based software. I see them (and my
 dentist) using it. And the doctor no longer writes physical
 prescriptions. He just enters it into his laptop; it then ends up
 going to my pharmacy; and they send a text to my phone when it is
 ready to pick up. I really don't see much of any reason for
 application level code on the z any more. Things like DB2, maybe.
 But CICS? Sorry, it is simply easier to create a web based
 transaction using WAS or JBOSS or Tomcat on a server. Doing so is more
 cost efficient for our size (and shrinking) business. The only reason
 we continue with CICS/COBOL is that we do incremental changes. We
 don't have the money to convert from CICS or batch COBOL to something
 else (likely Microsoft .NET based shudder/).
 
 
 On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to work
 with
 IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase out
 their
 mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based servers.
 For
 various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look for
 a new
 Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
 understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on the
 z/OS
 platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who chose to
 develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that successful
 vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not chosing
 z/OS,
 why not?
 
 --
 Maranatha! 
 John McKown
 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Ed Gould


On Jan 29, 2013, at 4:00 PM, Don Williams wrote:


Don't forget the Plus SH



And software.




-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Ed Finnell
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 4:25 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: mainframe selling points

You want software with that 'turkey'?


In a message dated 1/29/2013 2:40:40 P.M. Central Standard Time,
edja...@phoenixsoftware.com writes:

especially at the end of a  quarter

- 
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Re: mainframe selling points

2013-01-29 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler

st...@trainersfriend.com (Steve Comstock) writes:
 IBM blew it 20-30 years ago when they stopped being generous
 to colleges and universities. Looking at the short term.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#74 mainframe selling points
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#75 mainframe selling points

20yrs ago IBM had gone into the red (significantly accelerated by
stranglehold that the communication group had on datacenters). corporate
executives had been preping the company for breakup ... recent
references to old time article baby blues ... restructuring as part of
preperation for breackup
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#61 What is holding back cloud adoption?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#63 Today in TIME Tech History: 
Piston-less Power (1959), IBM's Decline (1992), TiVo (1998) and More

the board then brings in Gerstner to resurrect the company and for a
complete make over ... recent posts mentioning Gerstner
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#32 Does the IBM System z Mainframe rely 
on Obscurity or is it Security by Design?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#60 Today in TIME Tech History: 
Piston-less Power (1959), IBM's Decline (1992), TiVo (1998) and More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#64 IBM Is Changing The Terms Of Its 
Retirement Plan, Which Is Frustrating Some Employees

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Re: mainframe selling points

Hi Scott,

While I've heard of zPDT, I don't really know/understand what is does or
offers a vendor.  Sounds like zPDT is an affordable and effective platform.
Too bad some vendor did not use it to develop an z/OS EMR package for
hospitals that already have a z/OS infrastructure.

Don

 -Original Message-
 From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Scott Ford
 Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 5:23 PM
 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
 Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
 Don,
 
 Dude a lot of vendors, like ourselves run Z/Pdt
 
 Scott ford
 www.identityforge.com
 
 Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
 I'll understand. - Chinese Proverb
 
 
 On Jan 29, 2013, at 2:39 PM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Hi John,
 
  System z is not cheap (does it start around $1M?).  I expect the
 traditional
  mainframe operating systems, like z/OS, z/VM, etc., to have a
 significant
  price tag.  I'm not sure what the pricing is for the zLinux variety
 of
  operating system. Free does not get you business class support.  Add
 to that
  the environment, DASD, etc., it's hard for the startup vendor to put
 all
  that in his garage :-)
 
  It seems like they are trying to prevent the creation of smaller more
  affordable mainframes.  What happened to P/390, FLEX-ES?  Is there
 any way
  to legally run z/OS on Hercules?  If a small vendor needs coupling
  facilities, I think he is out of luck.
 
  Don
 
  -Original Message-
  From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-
 m...@listserv.ua.edu]
  On Behalf Of John McKown
  Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 11:42 AM
  To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
  Subject: Re: mainframe selling points
 
  I am not sure, but the PC in impinging on the z in many ways. IMO,
 one
  reason is that some very creative people can afford their own PC and
  tools (especially if they use Linux). The investment is very low
  compared to a z. And the vendor can then market the product to
 many
  more people. Most every office in the world has PC class servers.
 Take
  the EMR package. If it is priced correctly and easy to use, then the
  market into local doctor's offices is immense compared to, say, only
  into a major hospital (which could possibly afford a z). I know my
  personal doctor has some sort of PC based software. I see them (and
 my
  dentist) using it. And the doctor no longer writes physical
  prescriptions. He just enters it into his laptop; it then ends up
  going to my pharmacy; and they send a text to my phone when it is
  ready to pick up. I really don't see much of any reason for
  application level code on the z any more. Things like DB2, maybe.
  But CICS? Sorry, it is simply easier to create a web based
  transaction using WAS or JBOSS or Tomcat on a server. Doing so is
 more
  cost efficient for our size (and shrinking) business. The only
 reason
  we continue with CICS/COBOL is that we do incremental changes. We
  don't have the money to convert from CICS or batch COBOL to
 something
  else (likely Microsoft .NET based shudder/).
 
 
  On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Don Williams donb...@gmail.com
  wrote:
  In my company's case, it's not a matter of asking our vendor to
 work
  with
  IBM.  The vendor already works with IBM, but has chosen to phase
 out
  their
  mainframe product and create a new one that runs on PC-based
 servers.
  For
  various reasons, the hospital decided to open the field and look
 for
  a new
  Electronic Medical Record (EMR) package across all platforms.  My
  understanding is that there is no viable EMR package available on
 the
  z/OS
  platform.  This made me wonder -- is there no EMR vendor who chose
 to
  develop their product on the z/OS platform?  I expect that
 successful
  vendors carefully chose their platform(s).  If they are not chosing
  z/OS,
  why not?
 
  --
  Maranatha! 
  John McKown
 
  
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 MAIN
 
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Re: mainframe selling points